BoF on National Comparisons of Uptake and Sustainability of e-Science Call for Participation
We sincerely invite you to participate in the UK e-Science 2007 All-hands Meeting Birds of a Feather session on National Comparisons of Uptake and Sustainability of e-Science, which will be held on 12th September 2007, at the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting in Nottingham, U.K.
The vision of e-Science is that a pervasive e-Infrastructure should underpin research activities and help drive them forward by enabling science that was previously impossible. In order to achieve this, e-Infrastructure tools and services need to become embedded in science practice and need to become "seen but unnoticed" features of researchers' everyday working life. However, before this vision can be realised there are significant obstacles to be overcome and despite the global reach of e-Infrastructures, key decisions are still being made at a national level. These relate to issues such as the commodification of technologies and services, the shaping of national infrastructures and organisational contexts as well as developments within research traditions.
The aim of the BoF is to discuss the current development and adoption of e-Infrastructures and tools in research in Taiwan and the UK and to map e-Research, particularly in the areas of digital archives and geo-science. This analysis will help identify challenges in the development and implementation processes as well as aiding technological and organisational alignment. As ASGC is the EGEE Asia Federation Coordinator, wider e-Science developments and achievements in Asia will also be presented and the session offers an excellent opportunity to exchange information and ideas of how e-Science can be applied in different fields.
We wish to complement the findings from earlier reports such as Gentzsch's report on Grid Initiatives: Lessons Learned and Recommendations in two ways: by adding information about work in Taiwan and by expanding the scope to include a wider set of e-Research technologies, in particular digital archives and geo-spatial datasets, two important components of e-Research infrastructures in a number of disciplines. The BoF will feed into a report on the uptake of e-Infrastructure tools and services, complementing existing work and informing stakeholders' strategic decision making in complex (trans-) national contexts. It should be of interest for all members of the e-Science community who are involved in strategic decision making in their projects and organizations.
For conference related information, please refer to the All Hands Meeting website. Please note that the early registration deadline is August 1st. If you have any further questions about the BoF, please contact Dr. Alexander Voss at alex.voss@ncess.ac.uk. We look forward to seeing many of you in Nottingham!
Sincerely yours,
Alexander Voss, Rob Procter and Yuwei Lin (National Centre for e-Social Science, UK)
Simon C. Lin and Eric Yen (Academia Sinica Grid Computing, Taiwan)
Wolfgang Gentzsch, D-Grid, Germany and Renci, NC, US