Content about Education

Announcement - Grid computing school: Emerging grid middleware standards Chapelle de Saint Lambert-des-BoisImage courtesy of Panoramio  Through lectures, hands-on sessions and a selection of focused conferences, this school will give attendees the opportunity to:understand the basics of grid computing,get acquainted with the different mechanisms of gridsbe aware of challenges and scientific perspectives of grid usageuse grid environments and port their own application onto a grid infrastructureSponsors:  CEA, EDF, INRIAVenue: Centre Port-Royal, Saint Lambert-des-Bois (78470) France Dates: Grid computing school: 8-19 June 2009Registration closes: 30 May 2009 Web site Register ContactThis school is designed for computational scientists and end users from any application discipline as well as for computer scientists in the field of distributed systems. Some background in programming and computer science is the only prerequisite.Grid beginners are welcome, as are people already involved in grid projects. Both groups will be

Video of the week - Remarks from a grid school graduate Video courtesy of John Urish. Samer Al-Kiswany, a graduate student at the University of British Colombia, attended the Florida International Grid School in January 2008.In November, while attending SC08, he spoke with Open Science Grid about what he learned at the school and how it has helped him move forward with his research.Al-Kiswany describes his motivation for attending the school, enumerates the most valuable things he learned there, and discusses his current work and achievements in his field of grid storage.The 2008 school was organized jointly by Open Science Grid, TeraGrid, the SC07 Education Program together with CHEPREO, CIARA at Florida International University, and the Computation Institute of The University of Chicago.

Announcement - 2nd International winter school in grid computing Curl up with your computer at home this winter. Image courtesy of akvis.com  The 2nd International Winter School in Grid Computing (IWSGC’09) will bring together world experts and enthusiastic students. Important Dates:Applications open: 24 November 2008Applications close: 12 January 2009 School Dates: 16 February – 30 March 2009 (20 hours/week)Pre-course exercises open: 15 December 2008 – 22 January 2009 Venue: OnlineTarget audience: researchers from any country who have recently started or are about to start working on grid projectsContacts: [email protected] School Web site Sponsors: EGEE, OSG, OGF IWSGC’09 will examine the conceptual and practical underpinnings of today’s grids. Experts will provide practical exercises, discuss the challenges of building and sustaining e-Infrastructure, report its rapid influence on the way we research, design and make decisions. They will share their vision of the developments and challeng

Announcement - Joint symposium BELIEF and 6CHOICE: Distance Learning as e-Infrastructure application Image courtesy of beliefproject.org  Symposium Dates: 28-29 January 2009Venue:  India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, IndiaEvent Web site  Cost: noneRegistration   Contact Important dates: 28 November 2008 - Abstract submission deadline5 December 2008 - Notification of acceptance/rejection16 December 2008 - Camera ready copy submission deadlineThe BELIEF and 6CHOICE consortia are organising a joint symposium, supported by the GLOBAL and 6DEPLOY projects. The event will provide a valuable platform to foster networking and support discussions on e-Infrastructure for Distance Learning which has become one of the top priorities not only of the Indian Government, but of the whole global Learning Society. The scope of the symposium is to understand, together with researchers, developers, users and policy makers, how European and Indian e-Infrastructure links can evolve.Representatives from the Secretary of State for Educat

Announcement - 1st EDGeS Grid Training Workshop & 2nd AlmereGrid Grid Experience Workshop Images courtesy of edges-grid.eu and almeregrid.nl  On 27-28 November 2008, AlmereGrid and EDGeS with support from Gridforum.nl will organise a two-day Desktop Grid workshop in Almere, The Netherlands. This workshop will start with an overview of the current state-of-the-art of Desktop Grid technology, e.g., BOINC, XtremWEB, the EDGeS Grid Bridge, and others.The afternoon of the first day a Masterclass will address the porting of applications to Desktop Grids and Service Grids. This masterclass is part of a successful series of Grid masterclasses organised by the Dutch Gridforum Society.The second day provides hands-on training in porting applications to the Grid. Participants will have access to the large European wide EDGeS Grid to run their exercises.The workshop is aimed at:Managers in Research and Industry who want to get an overviewof the state-of-the-art in (desktop) grid computing to see what it can bring to their organisati

Announcement - GÉANT security toolset training, Zürich, Feb 09 Image courtesy of terena.org  Second security toolset training event open for applicationsDates: 2-4 February 2009 Location: Offices of SWITCH in Zürich, SwitzerlandWeb siteNo feeRegister before 7 November 2008The GN2 Security Toolset development team are looking for around 15 people to become the second group of Approved GN2 Security Toolset Trainers, at a course in Switzerland in February 2009. This follows a successful pilot course in March 2008, which helped to bring the Security Toolset into use in a number of institutions across Europe.The next round of training is aimed primarily at NREN security operatives, but is also open to the non-commercial computer security community as a whole and possibly to the commerical world as well.The February 2009 course has been designed to enable participants to understand and be able to use the Netflow-based GÉANT2 Security Toolset, which consists of the netflow analysis tools NfSen and NfDump and

Image of the week - Fostering conditions to leverage the rich and evolving CI that surround us  Image courtesy of Patricia Hilton and GSA OIS.This mural by Patricia Hilton represents what she heard at a preparatory discussion for the 16 September workshop Strategic Leadership For Networking and Information Technology Education , sponsored by the GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions.The office leads monthly Collaborative Expedition workshops to advance the quality of citizen-government dialogue and intergovernmental collaborations. This workshop aimed to create the basis for a broad and successful coordination effort to build leadership in Networking and Information Technology (NIT) education.  It addressed fundamental workforce and educational goals that must be met in order to preserve U.S. leadership in NIT and ensure growth and prosperity: ensure the current generation is prepared to employ NIT capabilities effectively empower the next generation to create new technologies and concepts promote the innovative use

Feature - JobGrid connects Chinese graduates with employers Schematic of JobGrid workflow.Image courtesy of Feng Zhou, HUST. Graduates from over 75 universities in China and their potential employers have a new tool to help them find each other: JobGrid.Developed by researchers at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and Beihang University (BUAA) on a grant from the Ministry of Education of China, JobGrid is the first data grid to provide an authentic, secure, user-friendly communication and decision support platform linking universities, graduates, companies and the government in China. It runs on the China Education and Research Network (CERNET).JobGrid integrates students’ records and relevant personal information from participating Chinese colleges and universities. It converts the dissimilar data to a uniform format, creating a comprehensive, authoritative database with privacy controls. The database supports data storage, extraction and export. Centralized transaction processing handled by a distribute

Link of the week - SDSC director urges academia to make cyberinfrastructure  “real” Francine Berman.Image courtesy of SDSC. Comprising the “infrastructure” for the Information Age, cyberinfrastructure—the organized aggregate of information technologies such as computers, data networks, digital storage systems, and scientific expertise—is essential for future research advancement and discovery. In this month’s EDUCAUSE Review, Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, makes the case for investment in cyberinfrastructure as part of the “IT bill” for the Information Age.Just as technology transformed the Industrial Age, Berman writes that cyberinfrastructure has the potential to be a key driver of the Information Age, particularly with the explosive growth in digital data that is creating a new set of challenges in information management, storage, and long-term preservation. The challenge is that in the research and education communi

  Announcement - Grid school shares resources Image courtesy of ICEAGE  Grid computing school shares teaching resources through digital library and behind-the-scenes blog  Anyone with Internet access can now share all the thrills and spills of the sixth International Summer School on Grid Computing, from 6-18 July in Hungary. The school is training approximately 40 students from 20 countries in the ways of grid computing—a technology that helps scientists tackle complex problems by combining the power of computers around the world to create a powerful, shared computing resource. In the spirit of shared resources, the school has made all of its teaching materials available to the public via the ICEAGE digital library. Further, the school has invited a team of GridCast bloggers to blog live from behind the scenes, ensuring that the excitement of the school is also shared with those learning from home.“My experience at ISSGC’07 was profoundly worthwhile and eye opening,” says past student Andrew

Feature - Multiple middleware The National Institute of Nuclear Physics, or INFN, is dedicated to the study of the fundamental constituents of matter, and conducts theoretical and experimental research in the fields of subnuclear, nuclear and astroparticle physics. Image courtesy of INFN. Coexistence Since the birth of computational and data grids, a variety of middleware has been developed, deployed and used in a multitude of isolated e-infrastructures, and concern over middleware interoperability is growing. Recently, three researchers in Italy—Roberto Barbera of the University of Catania, Marco Fargetta of Consorzio COMETA, and Emidio Giorgio of INFN Catania—found a new approach to grid interoperation, based on “middleware co-existence.” In this approach, different middleware is deployed on the same infrastructure, allowing users to access and share resources within a single, well-defined policy, regardless of the middleware used, and with a common authentication and authorization scheme.Their appro

  SC Education Summer Workshops 2008: Computing and science education   Image courtesy of SC2008 Applications of HPC, grids and parallel computing to science educationThis SC Education workshop is intended for undergraduate and graduate educators in all fields of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, humanities, arts and social sciences, especially those from minority-serving institutions. High school teachers collaborating with college faculty and mentoring faculty are also welcome.The workshop introduces parallel and cluster computing in an educational setting. The instructors address teaching about grids and parallel environments, and present examples suitable for classroom use.The curriculum includes computational biology and computational chemistry tools and resources. It covers dynamic modeling, bioinformatics, simulation, molecular modeling, mathematical software and visualization vis-a-vis distributed environments and tools.SessionsNavajo Technical College, Crownpoint NM, 15-21 JuneGrand Valley Stat