NGS & OMII-UK project in the news

A recent edition of the weekly grid bulletin, iSGTW, featured an article by Simon Hettrick from OMII-UK on the joint NGS and OMII-UK Engage project.

The article explains the background to the Engage project and why it was set up with the goal of finding out the computational needs of various research communities by actually going out and talking to the researchers.

This approach is still somewhat unusual in e-science and has been a long time coming. How can we be sure we are providing the resources that researchers need if we don't go out and talk to them? The grid was originally built for the particle physicists but now there is a much larger research community who want to take advantage of the opportunities that distributed computing offers. The social scientists and molecular biologists, for example, don't necessarily work in the same way as the particle physicists and it is important that the tools are in place for them to take advantage of all available resources.

The Engage project will hopefully produce tools which will be deployed on the NGS and made available to these diverse communities therefore attracting more users from different subject areas. There is a lot of work yet to be done in taking the outcomes of the Engage project, making them available to the communities and, perhaps most importantly, making sure that the community knows that these tools exist for them to use.

Hard work at the OMII-UK workshop

Last week I attended the OMII-UK Collaborations workshop and, unlike many meetings where you sit and listen to presentations, this one was really hard work! The attendees were varied and included representatives from the Engage project teams, OMII-UK, the NGS, end users and data providers. The workshop consisted of breakout sessions where a variety of topics were discussed and all participants had to contribute to the discussion.

As the NGS outreach officer, I was particularly interested in the outreach / communication sessions. The session names say it all really –

• Communications between computer scientists and scientists that use computers
• How to talk to scientists?
• Best practices for software development in research community
• Tracking customer requirements

I can honestly say it was one of the most productive meetings I have ever attended with a great deal of productive discussion and long term collaborations planned. It’s not often you come out of a meeting with such a large number of people with concrete tasks and plans for the future!

If you would like to see the outcomes and slides from the meeting then visit the workshop page.

Archaeology in action

The NGS and OMII-UK work together on the Engage project which aims to promote the engagement of researchers with e-infrastructure in the UK. The Engage website holds a large amount of information on the project and also associated projects eIUS and e-Uptake which also look at the interaction and uptake of e-infrastructure within the academic community. The eIUS project has recently uploaded a video to the website demonstrating how computing has enhanced the work of researchers in archaeology. This is only the first in a series of video case studies produced by the project so watch this space for further announcements!

NGS research highlighted

The latest edition of iSGTW highlighted research carried out at the Univeristy of Oxford using NGS resources. Thushka Maharaj and Blanca Rodriguez both work on the Integrative Biology project and have used the NGS to examine the effects of defibrillation on the heart. Further information can be found in the iSGTW article.

The latest edition of the quarterly NGS newsletter is also out now featuring articles on hardware upgrades at the University of Glasgow, an update on the progress of the Engage project, how astronomers and cosmologists are making the most of the NGS and much more.

If you have anything you would like to see highlighted in the next edition of the NGS newsletter which is due out at the end of May then please let us know!