Conference Highlights GISELA-CHAIN Conference Mexico June 2012 Federico Ruggieri - INFN

2 The people

3 Most frequently used words  #1 – Science Gateway  #2 – Sustainability  #3 – Infrastructure  #4 – Applications  #5 – Users  Outsiders: Coffee-Break, GISELA, Latin America, Chain

4 Some numbers  3 full days of work  83 registered people  11 Sessions 3 of which with Keynote Speeches  49 Presentations with 10 Keynote Speeches  Following on-line live : consistently 20 - peak 60 people

5 Let’s start from the beginning The conference declared two main objectives:  Present outstanding results obtained by Scientific Communities using e-Infrastructures with focus on the advent of the new VRC-driven Science Gateway (SG) and their first outcomes;  Under the auspices of RedCLARA, discuss policies and plans for the long-term sustainability of SG-based Advanced Computing Services, with special emphasis on Latin America.

6 Large/high impact VRCs  HEP – Still a large and well organised community with years program: they can be the backbone community  Life Science – Large community with high Research/Social impact: they can involve also private funding/industries.  Health – Potentially very high social impact some attempts to go from research only to clinical support: impact on the citizen  Seismology – Seismic & Tsunami Hazard assesment is one of the most relevant domains with social impact and has a real worldwide coverage  Climate – World coverage, but also Regional impact and High Political impact and support

7 Other interesting communities  Mathematics – Computing resources can attract new users  Chemistry – Traditionally CPU hungry applications  Human Language – Mobility and social science coupled with computing resources as intermediate steps  Atomic and Molecular Data bases – Integration of DBs and worldwide community of users  Astrophysics – Several different activities and groups spread all over the world with a strong involvement of LA

8 Technologies (1)  Science Gateway:  Easy access of non (Grid) skilled users  Interoperability towards different regional eInfrastructures  Future improvements in usability and available services  Already adopted by several projects/communities  Several Portals are already available and migation to SG is an option but this has to be considered carefully  High Performance Computing  Large facilities can be integrated  GPU/low cost multi-thread computing has been integrated  Volunteer Computing  Several developments and many (simple) applications using it

9 Technologies (2)  Data  Access to distributed data repositories around the world (policies and data discovery and compatibility) and specific FS solutions  Data curation, management and long term availability is an issue no coherent strategy yet  Clouds  Virtual Machines are sometimes proposed to simplify the life of site managers (e.g. middleware update) & users (e.g. certified environment)  Data clouds are also attractive and some soultions are available or emerging but there are still issues about long term persistence, performances, security & privacy  Grids on top of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or VM on top of Grid infrastructures: both paths are investigated by now  Federations are still an issue

10 New projects  MESOAMERICA – Addresses the central America, but extends also beyond. A very promising forerunner project  ELCIRA – Mainly Network-oriented, but offers opportunities to support cooperation between EU and LA  CHAIN-REDS – A follow-up of CHAIN to start implementing the CHAIN’s Roadmap and address Data Infrastructures and Clouds  Others to be submitted

11 Outcomes  LA infastructure sustainability:  CLARA will extend its activity to cover also Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI)  Several Institutions have declared their availability to support the take-over from GISELA: UNAM, CUDI, CEDIA  An Agreement should be signed to officially confirm a take-over plan with personnel figures (skills & names)  CHAIN and CHAIN-REDS will support this transition  ELCIRA, MESOAMERICA and other future projects could complement the effort and push the e-Infrastructures in LA towards new more ambitious objectives and achievements

12 Towards 2020  Let’s profit of the human network we set-up (the most important resource we have)  Let’s be ambitious (and visionary) and not limit ourselves to the mere survival actions  Let’s think bigger beyond the LA and EU:  Federated Research & Education Networks (FREN) involving: LA, EU, Africa, Asia or even more general  Federation of eInfrastructures for Research & Education (FIRE), addressing Networks, Grids, Clouds, Data, etc.  There may be a case for direct funding of EC to relevant eInfrastructures (K. Glinos)

13 Conclusions  LA Infrastructures are mature and have taken new approaches to sustainability  Regional applications are numberous and differenciated (several scientific domains and social impacts)  New «regional» projects have been proposed for local funding  Brainstorming on future (2020) initiatives should be started without shyness  The current economical situation is generally difficult but that’s when one should start to use better the only unrestricted resource: the brain.

14 Thanks to all the participants

Thank you