Bill Appelbe

CEO and Chief Scientist of Victorian Partnership For Advanced Computing (VPAC)

"The Australian National Research Data Grid"

Abstract:

Traditionally, most research groups and institutions are responsible for maintaining and archiving their research data - from raw data to published results. Linking of research data is ad-hoc and based on community consensus, and reproducing published results is often difficult - requiring personal effort and collaboration with the author(s). However, there is increasing demand from researchers and industry to be able to link research data sets in disciplines such as Medicine, Bioinformatics, Engineering.

Recently the Australian Government announced a $100M+ ambitious 5 year program to establish a national data-grid for archiving the countries research data (from all Universities and research institutes), through a network of data centres operated by a single organization, ARCS (which VPAC is the Lead Agent for). This effort builds on earlier successful efforts by VPAC and others to build discipline specific data grids, such as Biogrid (for clinical research data).  While the national data grid is intended to be an operational facility, it introduces a wide range of open research and implementation problems - ranging from security, a single national authentication and authorization framework (AAF), privacy and consent, discoverability, reproducibility of research, and meta-data schema.

This talk will outline the emerging architecture and technology of the national data grid (building on technologies such as iRods and Shibboleth), and lessons learned from successful predecessors such as BioGrid. The talk will also outline the cultural and governmental factors that make such initiatives possible in Australia and relate to the challenges and opportunities in the USA.

Bio:

Bill Appelbe is the founder and Director of VPAC, the Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing (vpac.org). VPAC is a state-based, Advanced-Computing and HPC R&D service provider owned by the State Universities - supporting University, State, and Industry R&D. VPAC is the largest independent HPC service provider in Australia, and is the Lead Agent for several Australian Cyberinfrastructure programs, including ARCS. Bill is also on the Executive Committee of the NSF center for Computational Infrastructure in Geodynamics and an Adjunct Professor in Australia. Bill was on the faculty of Georgia Tech from 1986-1998.

http://www.vpac.org/staff/uid/bill

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You are cordially invited to attend a reception that will follow the seminar to chat informally with faculty and students. Refreshments will be provided.

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