Between 19th October and23rd November 2007

I attended sixinternational meetings

related to e-Science

Grid 2007Scientific and Scholarly Workflows

e-Social Science 2007W3C

Open Grid ForumMicrosoft e-Science

This is what I found

Everyday researchers doing everyday research

Everyday researchers doing everyday research

• Not just a specialist few doing heroic science with heroic infrastructure

• Everyone is mashing up• Chemists are blogging the lab• People are buying multicore

machines and mobile devices• The cloud and the “long tail”

11

A data-centric perspective, like researchers

A data-centric perspective, like researchers

• Data is large, rich, complex and real-time

• There is new value in data, through new digital artefacts and through metadata e.g. context, provenance, workflows

• This isn’t anti-computation – just design around data

22

Collaborative and participatoryCollaborative and participatory

• The social process of science revisited in the digital age

• “Users add value” is the very nature of research

• e-Science now focuses on publishing as well as consuming

• Scholarly lifecycle perspective

33

Benefitting from the scale of digital science activity to support science

Benefitting from the scale of digital science activity to support science

• This is new and powerful!• Community intelligence• Review• Usage informing

recommendation• e.g. OpenWetWare• e.g. myExperiment

44

Increasingly openIncreasingly open

• ...in terms of scholarly outputs and their reuse

• Preprints servers and institutional repositories

• Open journals• Open access to data• Science Commons• Object Reuse & Exchange

55

Better not PerfectBetter not Perfect

• The technologies people are using are not perfect

• They are better• They are easy to use• They are chosen by

scientists

66

Empowering researchersEmpowering researchers

• The success stories come from the researchers who have learned to use ICT

• Domain ICT experts are delivering the solutions

• Anything that takes away autonomy will be resisted

77

About pervasive computingAbout pervasive computing

• e-Science is about the intersection of the digital and physical worlds

• Sensor networks• Mobile handheld

devices

88

1. Everyday researchers doing everyday research2. A data-centric perspective, like researchers3. Collaborative and participatory4. Benefitting from the scale of digital science

activity to support science 5. Increasingly open6. Better not Perfect7. Empowering researchers8. About pervasive computing

Signs of the TimesSigns of the Times

• e-Science is now enabling researchers to do some completely new stuff!

• As the individual pieces become easy to use, researchers can bring them together in new ways and ask new questions

• “The next level”

Onward and UpwardOnward and Upward

1. Everyday researchers doing everyday researchBUT heroic infrastructure not being adopted

2. A data-centric perspective, like researchersBUT Grid gives APIs to computation not data

3. Collaborative and participatoryBUT deeply rooted service provider mindset

6. Better not PerfectBUT aims to provide well-engineered perfect solution

7. Giving autonomy to researchersBUT imposes institutional control (at this time)

8. About pervasive computingBUT about portals and not the next generation of users

The Grid ProblemThe Grid Problem

e-ScienceTechnologyCreators& Integrators

ApplicationsResearch

EEResearch

Socio-economic&CommercialInnovation

e-Sciencebespoketailoring

MassUse byResearchers

5 years 5 years 5 years

CSResearch

e-Science10s of

integrators100s of

embeddedconsultants

1000s ofresearch

users

The Arrow ProblemThe Arrow Problem e-Science Pipeline

Web Services RESTful APIs cmd lines ssh http

Web Browser Mobile phone iPod Car Equipment PDA

P2P

mashups

workflows

services

applicationsSubjectICT experts Computer

Scientists

Software Companies

Workflowtools

Ruby on Rails

ecosystem

Scientists

open sourceSoftwareEngineers

nesc

• It’s about empowerment as well as provision• People power• Hence usability:– Simple interfaces for users– Simple interfaces for developers– No need for a summer school!

• Step into user space and look back• Computer Scientists as facilitators and

problem solvers(?)

For a flourishing ecosystem...For a flourishing ecosystem...

Tony Hey

Others are saying this too...Others are saying this too...

Carole Goble

Geoffrey Fox

Contact

David De Rouredder@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Thanks to

Malcolm AtkinsonGeoffrey FoxCarole Goble

Tony Hey