OMII-UK News

4.2 million to set up the Software Sustainability Institute, climate change and global interoperability - all in the OMII-UK Newsletter

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 08:12:50 GMT

4.2 million pounds has been awarded by EPSRC to set up the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI). In this month's newsletter, Neil Chue Hong, the Director of the SSI, describes his plan for sustaining software developed by the research community.

Download the newsletter or view the newsletter webpage.

Inside the newsletter, we hear about the e-Science Institute's recent theme on climate change from Iain Coleman, a science writer based at the University of Edinburgh. We also hear from the University of Cambridge's Bruce Beckles who suggests that e-Research could benefit from an investment in the teaching of basic computing skills.

The back page is dedicated to some of OMII-UK's recent successes: the interoperability demonstrator which uses compute resources from around the world, and BioPortal, a project that recently contacted OMII-UK developers to say thanks for the 'excellent and timely support'.

In this month's newsletter:

Ensuring a bright future for research software

A 4.2 million pound grant will set up the Software Sustainability Institute, which will co-ordinate how the UK research community will sustain important research software and make it available for future use.

News in Brief

Downloads highlight Taverna's popularity, Learn about software on YouTube, Rapid is textbook software.

What we need to know about climate change

Are climate change predictions doomed to the failure? This and other concerns led Andrew Kerr to run the eSI's theme on Communicating the e-Science of Climate Change. Iain Coleman reports on the latest developments.

Research needs to focus on basic computing skills

Bruce Beckles, from the University of Cambridge, discusses his thoughts on how e-Research could be improved by investing in more teaching of computing skills.

European interoperability goes global

OMII-UK and the NGS have taken a step towards a future of globally integrated computing.

BioPortal benefits from excellent support

ICHEC recently praised OMII-UK for its 'excellent and timely support' in providing them with the bespoke functionality they needed for their project's job-submission service.

Rapid attains over 300 downloads a month

Mon, 8 Mar 2010 10:02:58 GMT

In May 2007, Jano van Hemert and his team at the University of Edinburgh started the Rapid project. In under three years, they have designed and developed software that has been used to help everyone from chemists to seismologists, and have now seen their downloads reach over 300 a month. 'For a project as small and young as us, we are exceptionally proud of the [achievement]' said van Hemert 'I am sure OMII-UK had much to do with the unstoppable growth in downloads and requests'.

Rapid is a unique way of quickly designing and delivering web portal interfaces to applications that require computational resources. It focuses on the requirements of the end-user by designing customised user interfaces for domain-specific applications that allow users to achieve particular tasks.

For more information, visit the Rapid website.

Deadline for workshop proposals for AHM 2010 is approaching fast - 28 February 2010!

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:30:11 GMT

http://www.allhands.org.uk/home

This month's iSGTW: "OSCAR understands the language of chemistry, naturally"

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 11:14:16 GMT

http://www.isgtw.org/?pid=1002352

CCGrid 2010: Call for Research/Product Demos - 17-20 May, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:39:20 GMT

We invite research demonstrations from laboratories or research groups (academic, government, or industrial) to showcase new innovations and technologies in Cloud Computing and HPC/scientific applications at the CCGrid 2010 conference. CCGrid is a highly successful and well-recognized International conference for presenting the latest breakthroughs in Cluster, Cloud and Grid technologies.

Visit the conference website.

Important Dates

Deadline for submissions - March 31st, 2010

Notification of Acceptance - April 5th, 2010

Although we are looking for demos on the emerging Cloud Computing and GPU-based computing areas, we welcome demos from all areas within the scope of CCGrid 2010. For information on the topics of interest, visit the conference website.