Cyberinfrastructure and the Transformation of Science, Education and Engineering

Tony Hey

Director of UK e-Science Core Program

Tony.Hey@epsrc.ac.uk

J.C.R.Licklider’s Vision “Lick had this concept of the intergalactic network

which he believed was everybody could use computers anywhere and get at data anywhere in the world. He didn’t envision the number of computers we have today by any means, but he had the same concept – all of the stuff linked together throughout the world, that you can use a remote computer, get data from a remote computer, or use lots of computers in your job. The vision was really Lick’s originally.”

Larry Roberts – Principal Architect of the ARPANET

A Definition of e-Science ‘e-Science is about global collaboration in key

areas of science, and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it.’

John Taylor

Director General of Research Councils

Office of Science and Technology Purpose of e-Science initiative is to allow

scientists to do faster, different, better research

The e-Science Paradigm

• The Integrative Biology Project involves the University of Oxford (and others) in the UK and the University of Auckland in New Zealand

Models of electrical behaviour of heart cells developed by Denis Noble’s team in Oxford

Mechanical models of beating heart developed in Auckland

Need to be able to build a ‘Virtual Organisation’ allowing routine access for researchers to specific resources in the UK and New Zealand

Common FabricGroup A

Group B

Resources

Generic services

e-Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructurefor Research

Private Resources

PrivateResources

Grids in Education• Education is a classic distributed organization

• New multi-disciplinary curricula require distributed experts interacting with mentors and students

• Education requires rich integration of data sources with people and computing

• Grids will ‘democratize’ resources enabling universal and ubiqitous access

• Learning Management systems such as WebCT, Blackboard, Placeware, WebEx and Groove all have natural Grid implementations

Information Grid

Enterprise Grid

Compute Grid

Campus Grid

R2R1

Teacher

Students

Dynamic light-weight Peer-to-peerCollaboration Training Grid

Overlapping HeterogeneousDynamic Grid Islands

Grid Middleware Infrastructure

• Global e-Science Infrastructure must support genuine needs of users/applications

• To support ‘routine’ collaboration between institutions in different countries need set of robust middleware services and agreed‘policies’

• Require global Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) Services

• Need robust and secure middleware services supported on top of network services

Global Terabit Research Network

The Grid software and resources run on top of high performance global networks

UK e-Science Funding

First Phase: 2001 –2004• Application Projects

– £74M– All areas of science

and engineering• Core Programme

– £15M OST– £20M DTI

Collaborative industrial projects

Second Phase: 2003 –2006• Application Projects

– £96M– All areas of science and

engineering• Core Programme

– £16M OST– DTI Technology Fund

GridPP Presentation to PPARC Grid Steering Committee26 July 2001

Steve Lloyd Tony DoyleJohn Gordon

Powering the Virtual Universe

http://www.astrogrid.ac.uk(Edinburgh, Belfast, Cambridge,

Leicester, London, Manchester, RAL)

Multi-wavelength showing the jet in M87: from top to bottom – Chandra X-ray, HST optical, Gemini mid-IR, VLA radio. AstroGrid will provide advanced, Grid based, federation and data mining tools to facilitate better and faster scientific output.

Picture credits: “NASA / Chandra X-ray Observatory / Herman Marshall (MIT)”, “NASA/HST/Eric Perlman (UMBC), “Gemini Observatory/OSCIR”, “VLA/NSF/Eric Perlman (UMBC)/Fang Zhou, Biretta (STScI)/F Owen (NRA)”

p13 Printed: 10/04/23

Comb-e-Chem Project

X-Raye-Lab

Analysis

Properties

Propertiese-Lab

SimulationVideo

Diff

ract

omet

er

Grid Middleware

StructuresDatabase

In flight data

Airline

Maintenance Centre

Ground Station

Global Networkeg: SITA

Internet, e-mail, pager

DS&S Engine Health Center

Data centre

DAME Project

APPLICATION SERVICE

PROVIDERCOMPUTATION

GEODISE PORTAL

OPTIMISATION

Engineer

Parallel machinesClusters

Internet Resource ProvidersPay-per-use

Optimisation archive

Intelligent Application Manager

Intelligent Resource Provider

Licenses and code

Session database

Design archive

OPTIONSSystem

Knowledge repository

Traceability

Visualization

Globus, Condor, SRB

Ontology for Engineering,

Computation, &Optimisation and Design Search

CAD SystemCADDSIDEASProE

CATIA, ICAD

AnalysisCFDFEMCEM

ReliabilitySecurity

QoS

GEODISE Project

Computational science

• Molecular dynamics

• Mesoscale modelling

• High throughput experiments

• High performance visualization

• Computational steering

• Terascale parallel computing

myGrid Project

• Imminent ‘deluge’ of data

• Highly heterogeneous• Highly complex and

inter-related• Convergence of data

and literature archives

Nucleotide Annotation Workflows

Discovery Net Project

Download sequence

from Reference

Server

Save to Distributed Annotation

Server

InteractiveEditor &

Visualisation

Execute distributed annotation workflow

NCBIEMBL

TIGR SNP

InterPro

SMART

SWISSPROT

GO

KEGG

1800 clicks 500 Web access200 copy/paste 3 weeks work in 1 workflow and few second execution

BioSim Grid

An e-science challenge – non-trivial

NASA IPG as a possible paradigm

Need to integrate rigorously if to deliver accurate & hence biomedically useful results

Noble (2002) Nature Rev. Mol. Cell.Biol. 3:460

Sansom et al. (2000) Trends Biochem. Sci. 25:368

molecular

cellular

organism

GENIE: Delivering e-Science to the environmental scientist

http://www.genie.ac.uk/

MIAS Devices Project

• Easy Plug and Play of Sensors• Wireless connection using

802.11• Positioning information from

GPS• Mobile medical technologies

on a distributed Grid

Sensor bus

GPS ariel

eDiamond Applications of SMF

Training and Differential Diagnosis “Find one like it”

Teleradiology and QC VirtualMammo

Epidemiology SMFcomputed breast density

?

Advanced CAD SMF-CAD workstation

e-Science Core Program (CP)

Overall Rationale: Four major functions of CP

– Assist development of essential, well-engineered, generic, Grid middleware usable by both e-scientists and industry

– Provide necessary infrastructure support for UK e-Science Research Council projects

– Collaborate with the international e-Science and Grid communities

– Work with UK industry to develop industrial-strength Grid middleware

Support for e-Science Projects

• Grid Support Centre in operation– supported Grid middleware & users– see www.grid-support.ac.uk

• National e-Science Institute – Research Seminars– Training Programme – See www.nesc.ac.uk

• e-Science Certificate Authority– Issue digital certificates for projects– Goal is ‘single sign-on'

Cambridge

Newcastle

Edinburgh

Oxford

Glasgow

Manchester

Cardiff

Southampton

London

Belfast

DL

RAL Hinxton

UK e-Science Grid

Access Grid – Group Conferencing

Multi-site group-to-group conferencing system

Continuous audio and video contact with all participants

Globally deployed

All UK e-Science Centres have AG rooms

Widely used for technical and management meetings

e-Science Centres of Excellence

• Birmingham/Warwick – Modelling

• Bristol – Media

• UCL – Networking

• Leeds, York, Sheffield - White Rose Grid

• Lancaster – Social Science

• Leicester – Astronomy

• Reading - Environment

Cambridge

Newcastle

Edinburgh

Oxford

Glasgow

Manchester

Cardiff

Soton

London

Belfast

DL

RL Hinxton

UK e-Science Grid: Second Phase OGSA Grid

SuperJANET4

Networking Research Projects

Network Infrastructure

GRS, GRID resource management

MB-NG, QoS Features

GRIDprobe, backbone passive monitoring at 10Gbps

‘FutureGRID, P2P architecture

GridMcast, Multicast-enabled data distribution

GRID Infrastructure

Service Infrastructure

UKLight• Infrastructure to support the UK part of an

International facility – the Global Lambda Integrated Facility - for Network R&D

– e.g. international Gigabit ethernet ‘channels’

• An example of the kind of infrastructure which might be incorporated in to SuperJANET5

• Implemented with:

– Telco Wavelength services

– Multiplexed channels (SDH) to carry Gigabit ethernet

GEANT

UKLightLondonStarLight

Chicago

NetherLightAmsterdam

CERN

CzechLight

UK Researchers

Extended JANETDevelopment Network

Local Research Equipment

International Point-of-Access

CA*net

Abilene

UKLight – showing connections to selected International peer facilities

10Gb/s

10Gb/s

10Gb/s

10Gb/s

10Gb/s

2.5Gb/s

Existing connections

Proposedconnections

The UK Grid Experience: Phase 1

• UK Programme on Grids for e-Science– £75M for e-Science Applications

• UK Grid Core Programme for Industry– £35M for collaborative industrial R&D

Over 80 UK companies participating Over £30M industrial contributions

• Engineering, Pharmaceutical, Petrochemical• IT companies, Commerce, Media

e-Science CP – Next Steps Deploy ‘production National Grid Service’

based on four dedicated JISC nodes plus the two UK Supercomputer Facilities

Develop operational policies, security, …Gain experience with genuine user

community

Develop ‘OGSA’ based e-Science Grid Based on two OGSA Grid projects and

e-Science CentresWork with EGEE project

Research Prototype Middleware to Production Quality

• Research projects are not funded to do the regression testing, configuration and QA required to produce production quality middleware

• Common rule of thumb (Brooks) is that it requires at least 10 times more effort to take ‘proof of concept’ research software to production quality

Key issue for UK e-Science projects is to ensure that there is some documented, maintainable, robust grid middleware by the end of the 5 year £250M initiative

Open Grid Services Architecture • Development of Web Services• OGSA and WSRF will provide

Naming /Authorization / Security / Privacy/… Projects looking at higher level services: Workflow,

Transactions, DataMining, Knowledge Discovery… Exploit Synergy: Commercial Internet

with Grid Services

The Key Problem: Research Prototype Middleware to Production Quality

• Research projects are not funded to do the regression testing, configuration and QA required to produce production quality middleware

• Common rule of thumb is that it requires at least 10 times more effort to take ‘proof of concept’ research software to production quality

Key issue for UK e-Science projects is to ensure that there is some documented, maintainable, robust grid middleware by the end of the 5 year £250M initiative

The UK Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII)

• Repository for UK-developed Open Source ‘e-Science/Cyber-infrastructure’ Middleware

• Documentation, specification,QA and standards

• Fund work to bring ‘research project’ software up to ‘production strength’

• Fund Middleware projects for identified ‘gaps’

• Work with US NSF, EU Projects and others

• Supported by major IT companies Southampton selected as the OMII site

2.4 Petabytes Today

Digital Curation Centre (DCC)• In next 5 years e-Science projects will produce

more scientific data than has been collected in the whole of human history

• In 20 years can guarantee that the operating and spreadsheet program and the hardware used to store data will not exist

Research curation technologies and best practice Need to liaise closely with individual research

communities, data archives and libraries

Edinburgh with Glasgow, CLRC and UKOLN selected as site of DCC

The UK ‘Dual Support’ SystemUK Government provides two streams of public funding for university research:– Funding provided to the universities for

research infrastructure – salaries of permanent academic staff, premises, libraries & central computing costs

– Funding from the Research Councils for specific projects – in response to proposals submitted & approved through peer review

This ‘Well Founded Laboratory’ concept needs to be extended to support ‘virtual laboratories’

Initial Research Infrastructure Portfolio

• Prototype ‘National Grid Service’ based on dedicated Compute and Data Clusters

• Semantic Grid development projects

• AccessGrid Support Service

• e-Social Science Training material

• Intelligent Text Mining Service for Biosciences

• Digital Curation Centre

New Research Infrastructure Funding• £3M for Security Development Projects

– Combine Shibboleth with PERMIS Authorization Services

– Joint project with NSF Internet2 NMI project on Security Services for ‘Virtual Organizations’

• £2M+ for Identified JCSR Topics– Data Handling, Visualization, Knowledge

Management, Collaborative Tools, Human Factors– New ‘Grids for Education’ program?

• £3M for ‘Collaborative e-Research Environments’– Data Analysis and Visualization Centres?

New Research Infrastructure Funding 2

• £3.4M for ‘National Middleware Services’

– Deployment of NationalAuthentication Framework based on Shibboleth

– Provide support Digital Library and e-Science communities

• Goal is to develop global AAA infrastructure

- Australia and Switzerland exploring this route

- Work with US NMI and EU EGEE projects

- Work with Internet2, TERENA and the NRENs

What is Shibboleth? An architecture developed by the Internet2

middleware community• NOT an authentication scheme (relies on

home site infrastructure to do this)• NOT an authorisation scheme (leaves this

to the resource owner)• BUT an open, standards-based protocol for

securely transferring attributes between home site and resource site

• Also provided as an open-source reference software implementation

UK e-Science Timeframes

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

SR2000 * * *

SR2002 * * *

SR2004 * * *

SJ5/AAA Service * *

LHC/LCG *

e-Science Infrastructure beyond 2006

1. Persistent UK e-Science Research Grid

2. Grid Operations Centre

3. Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute

4. National e-Science Institute

5. Digital Curation Centre

6. AccessGrid Support Service

7. e-Science/Grid Legal Service

8. International Standards Activity

Cyberinfrastructure and Universities ‘e-Science will change the dynamic of the way science

is undertaken.’ John Taylor, 2001

Need to break down the barriers between the Victorian ‘bastions’ of science – biology, chemistry, physics, ….

Problems with tenure and publicationsDevelop ‘permeable’ structures that promote rather

than hinder multidisciplinary collaboration Need to engage University IT Service Departments –

Computing, Library, ..

A Definition of the Grid

‘[The Grid] intends to make access to computing power, scientific data repositories and experimental facilities as easy as the Web makes access to information.’

Tony Blair, 2002