Speaker
Dr
Algimantas Juozapavicius
(associate professor)
Description
Introduction
The Baltic Grid project, a FP6 program, involving 10 leading institutions in six
countries, started in November 2005. Its aims to i) develop and integrate the
research and education computing and communication infrastructure in the Baltic
States into the emerging European Grid infrastructure, ii) bring the knowledge in
Grid technologies and use of Grids in the Baltic States to a level comparable to
that in EU members states, and iii) further engage the Baltic States in policy and
standards setting activities. The integration of Baltic States into the European
Grid infrastructure is primarily focusing on extending the EGEE (with which four
partners are already engaged) to the Baltic States. The Baltic Grid takes advantage
of the local existing e-infrastructures in the region.
The Baltic Grid project is of high strategic importance for the Baltic States and it
is designed to give a rapid build-up of a Grid infrastructure, contributing to the
enabling of the new member states participation in the European Research Area.
One of the most important steps in Baltic Grid development is application
identification and support. This activity will be carried out through three tasks.
Pilot Applications
Baltic Grid intends to initiate three pilot applications for validation and for
demonstration of successful scientific use.
High-energy physics application includes statistical data analysis, production of
Monte Carlo samples and distributed data analysis, nuclear and sub-nuclear physics,
condensed matter physics and many-body problems. It will be implemented because of
the critical importance of Grids to this community and its relative maturity.
Material sciences application presents research areas, having substantial number of
potential Grid users among scientists in Baltic states. It includes tools for
establishing the geometrical structure of various organic, metal-organic and
inorganic materials; understanding optical and magnetic properties of molecular
derivatives; predicting new technology and creation of new materials with specified
characteristics. Modelling and simulation of heterogeneous processes in chemistry,
biochemistry, geochemistry, electrochemistry, biology, engineering will be
implemented because of MS strategic importance to the Baltic States and substantial
computing needs.
A bioinformatics application will be implemented to give tools and computing
procedures for sequence pattern discovery and the gene regulatory network
reconstruction, inference of haplotype structure and pharmacogenetics related
association, studies, modelling and exploration of mechanism of enzymatic catalysis,
de novo design of proteins, quantum-mechanical investigations of organic molecules
and their applications, for the refinement of 3D biological macromolecule models
against X-ray diffraction or NMR data, for modeling of biosensors and other reaction-
diffusion processes. This application intends also to support the collaborative
efforts of scientists in the Baltic States in this highly distributed community with
needs to share data from many sources and a diverse set of tools.
Special Interest Groups
The task of special interest groups (SIG) aims to improve communication among many
separate research groups, having similar or related R&D interests. The development
and implementation of SIGs is a relatively new idea in grid computing infrastructure
based on semantics representation methods and tools and leading to enhancement of
services and applications with knowledge and semantics. Research areas under
consideration for SIG development and implementation are: modelling of the Baltic
Sea eco-system (together with BOOS – a future operational oceanographic service to
the marine industry in the Baltic region), hydrodynamic environmental models for
sustainable development of the Baltic Sea coastal zone, environmental impact
assessment and environmental processes modeling, life sciences and medicine.
Application Adaptation Support
This is a specific activity aiming to organize and initiate communication between
application experts and Grid experts facilitating rapid Grid adaptation and
deployment of applications through formation of an Application Expert Group. This
group will analyze applications and identify required Grid technologies and provide
consulting services to application developers. The services will include assistance
with integration with the Migrating Desktop to enable GUI-based access to the BG
infrastructure and services, ensuring interoperability with the BG middleware.
Performance studies to find bottle necks of the deployed applications may be carried
out if needed using tools for performance evaluation, like G-PM and OCM-G, developed
in CrossGrid Project.
Author
Dr
Algimantas Juozapavicius
(associate professor)
