Special Session: "Extreme Computing: The Data Grid and the Future of Distributed Computing"
Free Public Lecture, Thursday, 14 August 2003, 7:30 p.m., Ramsey Auditorium

Background

On Thursday evening, 14 August 2003, there will be a special session on grid computing. High-energy physics is increasingly becoming a field centered on a few experiments at a few large accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Each of these experiments serves the entire interational community. These "experiments" are now really programs which can run for more than a decade and produce massive datasets. The ability to collaborate and share data is a powerful method for maximizing the value of these large facilities by allowing scientists/analysts to have access to the data independent of where in the world they might be located or what computing resources they might have locally. The "Data Grid" is a new distributed computing platform that will facilitate the development of Virtual Distributed Organizations to analyze these huge datasets. This session will have talks from pioneering computer scientists, high-energy physicists, and major corporations who are now developing and deploying this new capability that will be so important to the future of our field and many others.

Program

Moderator and Introduction: Victoria White (Fermilab)
TimeTitleSpeaker
7:30 p.m. Introduction and Overview of the Grid: Current Status of U.S. Grid R&D and Deployment Ian Foster (Argonne & Chicago)
8:00 p.m. Grids in Europe and the LCG Project Ian Bird (CERN, LCG)
8:30 p.m. Network Research Infrastructures: Back to the Future Robert Aiken (Cisco)

8:50 p.m. - 9:05 p.m. Break

Moderator: Ruth Pordes (Fermilab)
TimeTitleSpeaker
9:05 p.m. All Grid, All the Time Stephen Perrenod (SUN)
9:25 p.m. Grid Services and Web Services: Harmonic Convergence David Martin (IBM)
9:45 p.m. TeraGrid and High-End Computing: Lessons and Futures Daniel Reed (UIUC, NCSA,Teragrid)


Speaker Biographies

Ian Foster (Argonne & Chicago)

Dr. Ian Foster, co-author of "The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure", is an internationally recognized researcher and leader in the area of Grid computing. Dr. Foster is Associate Director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory and Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. The Distributed Systems Lab that he heads at Argonne and Chicago is home to the Globus Toolkit, the open source software that has emerged as the de facto standard for Grid computing. His awards include the GII Next Generation Award and the Lovelace Medal.

Ian Bird (CERN, LCG)

Ian Bird is currently one of the project managers of the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project and is responsible for deploying, operating, and supporting the service for the LHC high energy physics community. He has been in this position at CERN since September 2002, previously he spent 6 years as Head of Computing at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, VA, where he was responsible for all aspects of computing for the lab and the physics users, including initiating the lab's involvement in grids. His background is in High Energy Physics, and prior to moving to Virginia he spent 16 years at CERN working in several muon and neutrino experiments leading software projects as well as doing physics analysis. He was educated in England and holds a B.Sc from the University of Lancaster and a Ph.D from the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

Bob Aiken (Cisco)

Robert Aiken is the Director of Cisco's Academic Research Technology Initiatives, which encompasses Cisco's Applied R&D (CARD), University Research Program (URP), National Research Network (RN) research and Higher Education/NRN strategic programs. Prior to joining Cisco, Bob was the network and security research program manager for DOE's Computing Information and Communications (formerly HPCC) program. Bob was program manager and co-author of DOE's Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative,as well as providing technical leadership and direction of for DOE's international researchnetwork (ESnet) and DOE2000 middleware programs. Bob has been active in the GRID and middleware community since 1997. Prior to rejoining the DOE CIC/HPCC effort, Bob worked at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) where he created and managed ANL's Network Research group. IN 1991, Bob spent a year at the National Science FOundation (NSF) as the National Research and Education Network (NREN) program manager,and with colleagues Peter Ford and Hans-Werned Braun co-authored the conceptual design report od the second generation NSFNET (vBNS, Network Access Points (NPSs)), which enabled commercialization of the Internet backbone.Before Bob's NSF tenure, he was DOE's ESNet program manager and Executive director of the ESnet steering committee, as well as the creator and manager of ESnet's Network Information Serivces, and Response group. Prior to Bob's experience on wide area networks, Bob was responsible for managing supercomputers (e.g. CRAY) and coding their operating systems as well as providing high speed LAN access to supercomputers. His academic experience includes being an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Hood College in Maryland, an Adjunct Professor at California State University Hayward and the Manager of Technology Services at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania.

Stephen Perrenod (SUN)

Dr. Perrenod has been involved in high performance computing and scientific computing for over 20 years. Prior to Sun, Dr. Perrenod served as a Sales Analyst and Marketing Manager with Cray Research for 8 years, including a year with Silicon Graphics where he was responsible for HPC in Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering ISV relations. Dr. Perrenod has also held positions with Alliant Computer Systems as a Strategic Marketing Director, European Technical Marketing Manager and Asian Technical Marketing Specialist, and with Sohio Petroleum Corporation, a British Petroleum subsidiary, as a Scientific Software Designer and Reservoir Engineer. Dr. Perrenod was a postdoctoral researcher in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Kitt Peak National Observatory and at the University of Illinois. He holds a B.S. in Physics from M.I.T., as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University.

David Martin (IBM)

David Martin is Program Director, Internet Standards and Technology for IBM. He is part of the Advanced Internet Technology department in IBM's Systems Group that works to advance the state of Internet technology both inside and outside of IBM. David helped develop the internal IBM Grid testbed, a worldwide network of computing and storage resources for experimentation and learning. External to IBM, David works with standards organizations to advance networking and distributed computing standards. He is active in the Applications Area of the IETF and the Global Grid Forum. Most recently, he was on the Program Committee for GGF8. David began his career in 1986 at AT&T Bell Laboratories where he designed high-speed packet-switching network equipment and did research into distributed software engineering environments and object oriented programming. He helped transition the 5ESS development environment to use interactive development environments and structured design and development. In 1991, he went to Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he built some of the earliest web applications and helped design a world-wide network for the energy research community. In particular, David focused on distributed applications enable by ubiquitous high-speed networks. He developed the PingER network monitoring system to measure worldwide HEPnet performance. David joined IBM in 1998, as Manager of Infrastructure and Architecture for the Advanced Internet Applications Center, part of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research, a joint research project between IBM, Cisco, Ameritech and Northwestern University. David's designed and built the testbed facilities for data storage and high-quality video delivery. David has a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University and a MS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. David is active in the Internet Engineering Task Force and the Global Grid Forum.

Daniel Reed (UIUC, NCSA,Teragrid)

Daniel A. Reed is Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dan serves as director of the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In this dual directorship role, Reed provides strategic direction and leadership to the Alliance and NCSA and is the principal investigator for the Alliance cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. Dr. Reed is one of two principal investigators and the Chief Architect for the NSF TeraGrid project to create a U.S. national infrastructure for Grid computing. The TeraGrid is a multiyear effort to build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, distributed computing infrastructure for open scientific research. Scientists will use the TeraGrid to make fundamental discoveries in fields as varied as biomedicine, global climate, and astrophysics. Dr. Reed is also the principal investigator and leader of NEESgrid, the system integration project for NSF's George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), which is integrating distributed instruments, computing systems, and collaboration infrastructure to transform earthquake engineering research. Reed was head of the University of Illinois computer science department from 1996 to 2001 and, before becoming NCSA and Alliance director was co-leader of the Alliance's Enabling Technologies teams for three years. He is a member of several national collaborations, including the NSF Center for Grid Application Development Software, the Department of Energy (DOE)Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program, and the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute. He is chair of the NERSC Policy Board for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is co-chair of the Grid Physics Network Advisory Committee and is a member of the board of directors of the Computing Research Association. He is an incoming member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC). In addition, he served as a member of Illinois Governor Ryan's VentureTECH committee, which advised the former governor on technology investment in Illinois.

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