Member details: computational & data grids

Academia Sinica Computing Centre (ASCC) – Taiwan

The Computing Centre of Academia Sinica (ASCC) was formed in November 1984 as an ad hoc group. At the beginning of 1990, ASCC became an official department of Academia Sinica after the amendment of Academia Sinica Organization Law. The missions of ASCC are to:

• Promote overall information service and computational development environment in Academia Sinica.
• Provide technical support for specific computational demands.
• Strengthen information and consulting services.
• Develop kernel structure of Digital Archives Program in Academia Sinica.
• Explore kernel technology of geospacial computing services.
• Establish computer information management system.
• Extend cooperative modules for international information service.

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California Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Computing (CACR)

The mission of the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) is to ensure the California Institute of Technology is at the frontier of computational science and engineering. CACR organizes and plays key roles in multidisciplinary collaborations to extend the frontiers of science and engineering by:

• Following an applications-driven approach to research
• Providing an environment that cultivates multidisciplinary collaborations
• Harnessing new technologies to create innovative computing environments
• Conducting multidisciplinary research using these computing environments

CACR's current primary areas of research are:

• Software architectures for scientific computing applications
• Analysis of large scale, heterogeneous, distributed scientific data collections
• Innovative architectural and programming paradigms for future computing systems

Collaborations typically involve a scientific or engineering group at the California Institute of Technology or Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, together with participation by leading related research groups at other institutions.

CACR is one of the four initial participants in the TeraGrid, the NSF-sponsored multi-year effort to build and deploy the world's largest, most comprehensive, distributed infrastructure for open scientific research. CACR's role in the TeraGrid is the development of an exemplary center for the exploratory analysis of large scale data collections. In this context, CACR is collaborating with national and international scientific research communities, including astronomy, high energy physics, neutron physics, and geosciences.

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CASPUR (Consortium for Supercomputer Applications for University and Research)

CASPUR is a no-profit inter-university Computer Centre established on June 5, 1992. It is funded by the Italian Ministry for Education, Universities and Research (MIUR), and by some participating Universities (currently: Politecnico di Bari , Università di Bari, Università di Lecce, Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Università Roma Tre, Università della Tuscia, Istituto Universitario Scienze Motorie, Università di Foggia). Its main mission is to provide modern computing facilities and competence in the fields of high-performance computing and information technology for Italian universities and affiliated research organizations.

CASPUR has conventions and collaborations with Italian and international research and educational organizations like:

• INFN (Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics)
• ENEA (Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Environment)
• INGV (National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology)
• CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research).

Presently CASPUR employs 60 people (56 technicians and 4 administrative employees) and grants about 20 scholarships. The hardware platforms are based on last-generation processors like IBM Power4, HP Alpha EV6x and EV7, Intel Itanium 2. All the systems are highly integrated. This allows the users to access any system with the same account and to have their data available everywhere.

CASPUR carries on an advanced experimental activity in the networking (IPV6, wireless) and storage (SAN, NAS, geographical file-systems like AFS, SCSI over IP) sectors and it is often required by vendors to test and evaluate their hardware and software products.

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CILEA

CILEA is a consortium of 9 universities in Northern Italy, founded in 1976, which provides IT services to academic institutions, public and private companies.

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Fraunhofer SCAI

The Fraunhofer-Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) engages in computer simulations in product and process development and is a strong partner in industry. SCAI designs and optimizes industrial applications, advises the customers in choosing the right simulation software, and does calculations on high-performance computers. The aim is to reduce development times; to make experiments less expensive; and to optimize technical processes – in the interest of the customers. SCAI Bioinformatics focuses on the core areas of applied life science informatics: IT infrastructures for clinical genome research, biostatics, and semantic text analysis as well as chemical informatics.

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Indiana University

Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than 100,000 students, faculty and staff on eight campuses. IU is home to a sophisticated and powerful environment for research and academic computing. The university manages the operations centers for Abilene, the backbone network of Internet2, TransPAC, a network connection between the U.S. and the Asia Pacific region, the Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP) in Chicago and Euro-Link.

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Life Sciences Academy (Malaysia)

Life Sciences Academy Sdn. Bhd. (LSA), located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is an organization committed to the excellence of proteomics research, skills development and discovery of potential animal and human therapeutics within the fields of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Our aim is to enhance our capability and capacity in the areas of biotechnology and drug discovery. Informatics is a critical element in this endeavor, so we have teamed up with two companies to date, Accelrys and Symantec, which are experts in this area.

For general access to our company information, please use the following link, www.lifesciencesacademy.com. There you may also find specific information about our research and flagship products.

For further information:

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Naples branch of National Research Council (CNR) Institute for HPC and Networking (ICAR-NA)

Primary aims of the Naples branch of the CNR Institute for High-Performance Computing and Networking (ICAR-NA), former Center for Research on Parallel Computing and Supercomputers (CPS), include:

• Development and analysis of High-Performance and Grid Computing methodologies and software tools driven by large-scale scientific applications
• Analysis and evaluation of hardware and software advanced environments for HPC

ICAR-NA is also concerned with the diffusion and transfer of know-how in the field of HPC, through the organization of conferences, seminars, and courses, and the training of PhD students and young researchers. ICAR-NA conducts some basic research programs as long-term activities in the field of HPC and participates in a variety of national and international applied research projects in various fields of Science and Technology, where results and know-how from basic programs are exploited.

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National Grid Office (Singapore)

The National Grid Office (NGO) was created in January 2003 with a vision to realize "a Singapore where computer resources can be connected together via a high-speed network such that these resources can be shared in a secure, reliable, and efficient manner by authenticated users for education, commercial, entertainment, R&D, national security, and other purposes to improve the economic and technological competitiveness of Singapore and also the quality of life in Singapore." NGO aims to develop the framework and infrastructure to achieve the vision for the National Grid of Singapore by the following means:

• Formulate the framework and policies
• Plan and develop a secure platform
• Adopt common open standards
• Encourage the adaptation of grid computing
• Demonstrate the commercial viability of compute-resource-on-tap
• Lay the foundation for a vibrant grid computing economy

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PDC (Paralleldatorcentrum) of the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)

KTH, established in 1827, is one of Europe's top schools for science and engineering education and research, graduating one-third of Sweden's undergraduate and graduate engineers in the full range of engineering disciplines. Enrollment is about 17,500 students, of which about 1,400 are pursuing PhD studies.

PDC is the lead center for high-performance computing and visualization for the Swedish academic community. PDC is collaborating with five other HPC centers in Sweden within the SweGrid project, to establish a Swedish Grid infrastructure, a major initiative within SNIC, the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing. PDC is also a founding member of the Nordic Grid Consortium (together with CSC, Helsinki and Parallab, Bergen), and the European Grid Support Center (together with the UK e-Science program and CERN).

PDC, established in 1989, has extensive experience in providing secure access and dependable service and training for high-end state-of-the art environments for leading-edge computational research in science and engineering. To accomplish this task PDC has gained considerable experience in the development of tools and systems for administering and managing novel high performance computing environments for production, including massively parallel computers (Thinking Machines), early clusters (Digital and IBM), parallel/vector systems (Fujitsu), distributed shared memory systems (SGI), and Intel- and AMD-based clusters.

PDC in collaboration with the Department of Numerical Analysis and Computer Science (NADA) has developed an Open Source version of Kerberos V (Heimdal) delivered with Debian and Free BSD, and Open Source clients for AFS (ARLA). Among developed tools are schedulers/load levelers, file systems for distributed environments, and a software system for administering a cluster of currently 200 nodes, developed and deployed in cooperation with the Stockholm Bioinformatics Center.

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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is one of nine U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) multiprogram national laboratories, delivering breakthrough science and technology to meet key national needs. The DOE national laboratories apply their capabilities to meet selected environmental, energy, health and national security objectives, strengthen the economy, and support the education of future scientists and engineers. Pacific Northwest is managed by DOE's Office of Science, and performs work for many DOE offices as well as other government agencies. The W.R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a national user facility at Pacific Northwest, is the home of an 11.4-Teraflop supercomputer composed of more than 1,900 Intel Itanium 2 processors.

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PSNC

PSNC is known throughout the world for its innovative solutions and research on grid technologies. The Centre coordinates and participates in numerous projects financed by the State Committee for Scientific Research and the European Union, as well as by private companies such as SUN and SGI. The Centre has won numerous professional awards for its work.

PSNC's grid deployments focus on the following subjects:

• Grid resource management and grid application tools (the GridLab Project)
• Providing support for migrating from desktop to interactive applications (the CrossGrid Project)

PSNC actively participates in the creation and developing of standards and grid technologies. It co-organized the European Grid Forum, and it plays a significant role in works led by the Global Grid Forum (see http://www.gridforum.org).

PSNC participates in numerous international grid projects, such as GridLab, CrossGrid, GridStart, HPC Europa and EGEE. PSNC's research on grid environment applications has been recognized by the leading scientific centres in the USA. In addition, as a full member of the Globus Academic Affiliates Programme, the Center found its place among other prestigeous institutions in Europe, such as: CERN, Albert Einstein Institute and Imperial College of the UK. (See http://www.globus.org.)

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Rice University / CITI

The Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI) at Rice University is a research institution composed of faculty, research scientists, staff, and graduate students dedicated to the advancement of applied interdisciplinary research in the areas of computing and information technology. CITI’s goals are to support, foster, and develop research and education across a wide area of computing and information technologies, computational engineering, and information processing and theory. CITI’s purpose is to facilitate interdisciplinary research across the university’s school, departmental, center, and laboratory boundaries with industrial and government partners, and in collaboration with other universities.

CITI Vision: To build a community of scholars that engages in collaborative research and education covering virtually every aspect of information technology.

CITI Mission: Bring together scholars with complementary expertise to solve complex problems. To achieve this we:

• Work to develop a community of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary research
• Facilitate collaborations across department and school boundaries
• Encourage new research centers and groups in areas of strength
• Develop, promote, and support industrial and inter-institutional collaborations
• Support building infrastructure required to be successful in research
• Promote Rice's computing and IT research capabilities internally and externally
• Stimulate and promote the use of information technology in education
• Expand collaboration by developing partnerships beyond traditional boundaries, specifically focusing on collaborations with humanities and social sciences

For additional information about CITI go to http://www.citi.rice.edu.

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Santa Clara University

Founded in 1912, the School of Engineering of Santa Clara University educates technical experts that bring competence, conscience, and compassion into everything they do... on campus and in their professional careers. The School of Engineering offers four undergraduate degree programs, seven master's degree programs, and three Ph.D. degree programs in three disciplines. Small and personalized classes draw a diverse, international student body and faculty. The school's proximity to Silicon Valley provides hands-on, practical experience at local technology companies, with professional development opportunities through alumni networking and on campus career events.

For additional information about Santa Clara University, go to the web site below.

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Supercomputing Center of Catalonia (CESCA)

The Supercomputing Center of Catalonia, a public consortium of our local government, the FCR, 8 universities and the CSIC, offers:

• Since 1991, high performance computing for academical and industrial users.
• Since 1993, the Anella Científica, the research network interconnecting 41 institutions to RedIRIS, Géant, Internet2.
• Since 1996, pharmacophore search for pharmaceutical laboratories.
• Since 1999, the Catalonia Neutral Internet Exchange (CATNIX) for telecommunication operators and ISPs.
• Since 2001, online theses and dissertations published by 12 universities.

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Texas Learning and Computation Center

(details in preparation)

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University of Birmingham

Description and logo - TBS

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University of Bristol - Centre for e-Research

Description and logo - TBS

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University of Calabria HPCC

Funded in 2001 by the Italian Ministry of University and Research with the aim to provide hardware, software and expertise for different applications of parallel supercomputing, HPCC is one of the leading research institutes centered on parallel and distributed processing research and development. HPCC is interdisciplinary since it coordinates resources and competencies of different scientific areas that are already active at the University of Calabria. It aims to promote the diffusion and dissemination of advanced techniques in the field of compute-intensive numerical simulation and the production of tools, environments and infrastructures for innovative technology transfer.

Under the viewpoint of the computing equipment, the interdisciplinary collaboration is achieved and promoted by the establishment of a network of parallel multiprocessor machines, all connected by a high-speed network (on site departmental Grid).

The HPCC is one of the main sites of SPACI (Southern Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructures), a partnership between the University of Calabria, the University of Lecce, and the University of Naples "Federico II".

The HPCC main activity fields are:

• A High Performance Computing Environment for Scientific and Industrial Applications (Grid computing: architecture and scheduling problems)
• Turbulence in Astrophysical and Laboratory Plasmas
• Computational and Theoretical Chemistry
• Models for Simulation of Acentric Complex Phenomena
• Parallel Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Computational Optimization for Large-Scale Systems (logistics and transportation)

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University of Calgary/WestGrid

The Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, was a partner in the planning, implementation and operation of the MACI project that provided performance computing resources to researchers throughout Canada. It has also played key roles in the WestGrid high performance computing project that spans 8 partner organizations in Western Canada (the Universities of Alberta, Calgary and Lethbridge, British Colombia and Simon Fraser, as well as NewMic and the Banff Centre). Relevant distributed systems research at the University of Calgary includes parallel and distributed simulation, parallel network emulation, and recently work in the areas of meta-scheduling and data replica management for Grid computing.

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Universidade Federal de Campina Grande / OurGrid

Grid Computing has appeared with the enticing promise of turning computing into utility. The vision might be expressed as 'plug in the grid and solve your problem.' However, turning the grid vision into reality is no trivial matter. Despite the great progress made in the last few years, Grid Computing is still far from reality to most users. The OurGrid Project aims to deliver grid technology that can be used today to solve present problems.

To achieve this goal, OurGrid chooses a different trade-off compared to most grid projects. It forfeits supporting arbitrary applications in favor of supporting only 'Bag-of-Tasks' applications. Bag-of-Tasks applications are those parallel applications whose tasks are independent of each other. Despite their simplicity, BoT applications are used in a variety of scenarios, including data mining, massive searches, parameter sweeps, monte-carlo simulations, fractal calculations, computational biology, and computer imaging. The OurGrid solution has three major components: the MyGrid broker; the OurGrid community; and SWAN sandboxing.

MyGrid is a broker for Bag-of-Tasks applications that allows users to run an application on all processors they can access. The OurGrid community is a peer-to-peer network designed to enable worldwide resource sharing, without relying upon grid economy infrastructure (which is not deployed today). SWAN leverages the Bag-of-Tasks characteristic of the application to provide sandboxing that allows sites to safely run guest grid applications. All OurGrid components are open source. MyGrid has been available for 1.5 years and has a user community of around 50 users. OurGrid is in prototype stage, deployed in a small-scale experimental community. SWAN is in late development stage.

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University of Karlsruhe Computing Center (SSCK)

The university's computing center was founded in 1966 and has always been considered one of the largest and most advanced computing centers of German universities. Since the beginning of the eighties supercomputers and high performance networks have been operated here. The center was the first one in Germany to introduce computer lecture halls and established the first campus-wide high-speed glass fiber network in Europe. Since then the university has become renowned for a top quality supply of students and scientists in the field of most modern computer and communications technology.

Major technical areas the University is working in include:

• High Performance Scientific Computing
• High-speed networking
• Large scale data services and distributed computing

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University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky is the flagship state university for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and is located in Lexington, KY. Its current Grid activities include using the Grid to transfer data seamlessly from sensors in Brazil and results back using computational elements in both countries. Continued research efforts will focus on developing :

• simpler, more secure Grid computational elements for use in large scale simulations
• dynamic data-driven application simulations, such as contaminant transsport or wildfire modeling.

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University of Lecce (ISUFI/CACT)

ISUFI/CACT (Center for Advanced Computational Technologies) is devoted to advanced research in the area of High Performance, Distributed, and Grid Computing. ISUFI/CACT is one of the main sites of SPACI (Southern Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructures), a partnership between the University of Calabria, the University of Lecce, and the University of Naples "Federico II".

ISUFI/CACT is actively involved in both european (GridLab, EGEE) and national (GRID.IT) projects, its team regularly attends GGF working groups and meetings, and it is involved in several Grid technology development and application projects, including:

• Dynamic Grid Environments for Earth Observation Systems, Bioinformatics, Atmospheric and Climate Modeling, and Diesel Engine chamber geometry Simulation.
• Experience in middleware development: Extension of current globus MDS in the context of the GridLab European project, WP10, to support better resource brokering.
• Development of advanced Grid portals & libraries: GRB project to provide high-level globus services, unified grid-dbms systems, and advanced globus GSI enabled web services (GSI plugin for the gSOAP Toolkit to allow mutual authentication/authorization, delegation and connection caching).
• Design and development of a set of new networking technologies for grid applications.

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Yale University

Yale is a private university located in New Haven, CT. It was founded in 1701 and is one of the world's preeminent research institutions. There are numerous industrial partnerships in the computer science department, including joint post docs with Gaussian and efforts to create a Grid enabled Gaussian. Yale's grid research efforts are also involved in helping develop middleware for use by biologists and the pharmaceutical industry.

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