Seventh framework programme

Participant 9: Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek der Materie - FOM
NIKHEF is the FOM-Institute for Subatomic Physics. NIKHEF has been a key player in the Grid world since its infancy, beginning as one of the five leading partners in the European DataGrid project (ED6): it is currently a partner in EGEE-II, the Dutch national Virtual Laboratory project, and primary partner in the BIG GRID infrastructure project, which is funding the Dutch Tier-1 center.NIKHEF has primary expertise in the following areas: 1) security – since EDG NIKHEF has been active in this area, and is currently responsible for a few key components in (both EGEE and OSG/Globus). NIKHEF also has an international leading position in the area of security policy (EUGridPMA, IGTF). 2) Deployment – NIKHEF has been continuously running a production Grid site with all major services since 2001. 3) Architecture – Senior staff at NIKHEF have been involved in various high-level Grid design work over the past six years. NIKHEF will be the lead contractor in EGEE-III for the JRU, which is in the process of being established in The Netherlands around the BIG GRID project. The BIG GRID project, funded with 29 M€ and running from 2007 until and including 2011, is aimed at rolling out an e-science infrastructure in The Netherlands (see http://www.biggrid.nl). The following organizations are foreseen to join this JRU initially: the three BIG GRID consortium partners: NCF, NBIC (Radboud Universiteit), NIKHEF (FOM) and furthermore: VL-e (WTCW NV), SARA, UvA, RUG, KNMI, Surfnet, ICT-regieorgaan. The JRU will be open for new organizations. A subset of the JRU will contribute to EGEE-III: NIKHEF, SARA, UvA, RUG and KNMI.
Specific role in the project:

NA4: Coordinate support in the region and liaise with NA4 support teams. Astronomy and astrophysics cluster.

SA1: Security, Operations, Management.

SA3: Batch System Integration.

JRA1: Integration and standardisation of the frameworks on the Java side (gJAF and the Globusframework), and the coordination of the authZ protocols (XACML-SAML binding).
Profile of Key Personnel:

Dr. David Groep is senior researcher Grid computing at NIKHEF, and has worked on a wide range of Grid activities since 2000. In EGEE, he coordinates the Grid site security components and is a member of the middleware design team, editor of selected operational security policies, and member of the EGEE-OSG-LCG Joint Security Policy Group. He also established the Grid identity management authority in the Netherlands, and ensured European acceptance thereof in 2000. Since the founding in 2004 of the EUGridPMA, he has been its Chair. In October 2005, on the founding of the IGTF (the federation of Regional PMAs in Europe, the Asia Pacific and the Americas), he was elected its first Chair. Outside the security area, Dr. Groep is leader of the “scaling and validation” programme for Grid deployment and roll-out in the Dutch national e-Science project “VL-e”, and a prominent member of the BIG GRID Technical Committee that oversees the national e-Science infrastructure. On the operational side, he is co-responsible for resource acquisition and operations of the Grid facilities at NIKHEF, one of the “tier-1” core data centres in the LHC Computing Grid Project.

Jeff Templon is the leader of the Physics Data Processing project at NIKHEF. He was almost always involved in computing for the various experiments in which he participated; in 2001 he joined NIKHEF as one of the “Loose Cannons” in the High-Energy Physics work package of the EU DataGrid project, and has been working in Grid computing ever since. He has served as the HEP representative to the architecture task forces of both EDG and EGEE-I, leads the Data Intensive Sciences subprogram of the Dutch national Virtual Laboratory project, is deputy chair of the BIG GRID ‘user awareness committee’, is member of the WLCG Management Board and Grid Deployment Board, site representative to the EGEE Technical Coordination Group, a contributor to the gLite software distribution, and part-time NIKHEF sysadmin.
FOM leads the Dutch Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Stichting Academisch Rekencentrum Amsterdam, Amsterdam (SARA);

2. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RUG-CIT).
Participant 10: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is the Dutch speaking university in Brussels which counts over 9.000 students, over 2.000 staff, eight faculties including medicine and engineering, and associated high schools. VUB-HELIOS belongs to the Faculty of Sciences and is an R&D group active in a range of projects related to advanced telematics applications, services and infrastructure. Research, development, consultancy and training contracts are concluded with public and private institutions, including the European Commission, Belgian Ministries, and a large number of top level industrial companies. VUB-HELIOS has a well-connected and supported telematics prototyping and demonstration facility, called EuroDemo, located in central Brussels, used in many European projects. Over the years, VUB-HELIOS has developed a particular expertise in the dissemination of information related to international activities: web sites, newsletters, press releases, leaflets, workshops, etc. In EGEE the group has contributed to NA2 and in EGEE-II also contributed to NA3 and NA4. Its is also very involved in the Grid activities at the Belgian and regional (Flemish) level by coordinating BEgrid and leading the Flemish Grid workgroup in the frame of the Flemish e-research project.

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel will be the lead contractor of the Belgian Joint Research Unit. This JRU will include 2 partners, VUB and Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Specific role in the project:

NA2: Participate in the dissemination work for the Benelux and the Nordic federation (totaling 7 countries).

NA3: Participate in hands on courses for Belgian researchers using the BEgrid EGEE based infrastructure both for the novice user and more advanced users. MPI training will also be part of the trainings. Grid middleware installation and maintenance courses will be further developed and organized to train new sites that join BEgrid and EGEE.

NA4: Support users that start to use the Grid.

NA5: Report to EGEE about the ongoing work in the ETSI TC Grid (Technical Committee Grid) and other standardisation activities.
Profile of Key Personnel:

Rosette Vandenbroucke “licentiaat” Computer Science, has been ICT manager at the HEP department of the IIHE(ULB-VUB) and follows up all new techniques in the computing and network fields in their broadest scopes. She has a long standing experience in clustering and distributed computing at the local level and has been following the start-up of the Grid computing efforts. She also leads the ELEM/HELIOS research group in telematics in close collaboration with STC-ULB. She is the project manager of the Belnet Grid Initiative (BEgrid), the Belgian delegate to the e-IRG (e-infrastructure reflection team) and member of the ETSI Technical Committee Grid. She has coordinated the work of the Belgian JRU in EGEE-I and EGEE-II.
VUB leads the Belgian Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

Participant 11: Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe GMBH, FZK
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe is a research institution with a research and development program that extends over areas of industrial pre-commercialization phase research, provident research, and fundamental scientific research. FZK operates large scale facilities also for external users and the University of Karlsruhe. Through the GridKa Grid computing centre there is not only a close working relationship to university institutes all over Germany but also to CERN and the other Tier-Centres in Europe, the United States and Asia-Pacific rim. FZK is engaged in several European projects such as EGEE, Int.eu.Grid and gEcplise. Having proposed the German D-Grid initiative FZK has established a good contact with all relevant academic and industrial parties on the German Grid Computing scene. FZK is the leading partner in the D-Grid integration project and has a broad and long lasting experience with the operation of heterogeneous Grid infrastructures, based on the various middleware stacks such as gLite, Globus Toolkit and UNICORE.
Specific role in the project:

FZK is the leading partner of the German/Swiss distributed ROC. Besides managing and running all essential Grid services in activity SA1, a major task is the management of the Global Grid User Support (GGUS). In NA2, FZK is responsible for the federation’s outreach and dissemination activities. Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe will be the lead contractor of the D-Grid Joint Research Unit for Germany. This JRU will include 7 partners, all individually listed in this proposal.

NA2: Regional contact; press and media relations; localization and publication of material.

NA4: Regional coordinator and technical support for the DECH federation.

NA5: Continuation and expansion of close collaboration with the C3Grid project to ensure the interoperability of the German national Grid infrastructure and the EGEE infrastructure. Continuation of ongoing collaboration with the US-American Grid project ESG and the British NERC data Grid to enable the exchange of metadata.

SA1: Grid management, Grid operations and support, VO support, Grid security.

SA2: Operational procedures and follow-up: Contributions to operational procedures like handbook for operations. Network monitoring tools: Deploying of PerfSonar boxes in the OPN, feasibility study for all EGEE sites. Relations with NRENs: TNLC etc: Contribution to TNLC work. Trouble ticket exchange standardization: Delivering trouble tickets from DFN TTS
Profile of Key Personnel:

Dr. Sven Hermann Manager of distributed German Swiss ROC since the beginning of EGEE-II, before that deputy ROC manager in EGEE-I. Former main middleware administrator of Tier1 GridKa, therefore good expertise on Grid technology and middleware knowledge. Contributing to various SA1 activities for ensuring a stable production Grid environment. Coordinating the distributed work inside the German Swiss region, chair of regional SA1 telephone conferences. Ensuring stable communication channels to the sites.

Dr. Clemens Koerdt Deputy ROC manager Germany/Switzerland since the beginning of EGEE-II. He acquired detailed knowledge of relevant regional and EGEE wide operational problems and policy considerations. His current work includes also managing the German/Swiss Grid Operator on duty team (COD) and leading the COD 'best practices' working group. In EGEE-III he will continue with this activity and in particular is going to look after implementation of Service Level Agreements with the German/Swiss sites.

Dr. Torsten Antoni. Manager of GGUS, EGEE’s overall user and operations support infrastructure. Leader of a local working group responsible for the development and maintenance of the central support platform, integrating the distributed efforts in this field. Contributing to various activities in EGEE that are related to user support. Also leading the corresponding activities in D-Grid. This work will be continued in EGEE-III.

Christoph Erdmann Pfeiler. Vast background in industrial user support and system administration. EGEE-II NA2 and NA3 activity leader in Germany. Member of Web Task Force. Key account manager for German industry contacts. This work will be continued in EGEE-III.
FZK leads the German Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron DESY (DESY);

2. Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum GMBH (DKRZ);

3. Fraunhofer Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung E.V. (Fraunhofer);

4. Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung mit beschraenkter Haftung (GSI);

5. Verein zur Foerderung eines Deutschen Forschungsnetzes DFN Verein E.V. (DFN).

Participant 12: SWITCH – Teleinformatikdienste fuer Lehre und Forschung, SWITCH
SWITCH is a foundation with the task of “creating the necessary base for an efficient use of leading-edge telecommunication methods at the service of higher education and research in Switzerland`’ (statutes of SWITCH). The members of the foundation are the Swiss Confederation and the eight “cantons” supporting a University. Today SWITCH provides services to the eight Universities, 25 Universities of applied sciences, the two Federal Institutes of Technology, and several research sites. A team of 35 persons at the Zurich Head Office is responsible for the operation and development of the services.

SWITCH meets the needs of Swiss universities by

- providing customized access to SWITCH's own national network with high-quality Internet technologies,

- providing fast connections to the world wide research networks as well as the commodity Internet

- providing advanced network services in the areas of videoconferencing, mobile network access and security

- operating a national authentication and authorization infrastructure, based on Shibboleth

- maintaining excellent international contacts.
Specific role in the project:

NA3: Training for the Swiss high energy physics community, participating in ATLAS, CMS and LHCb. Intention to develop exemplars for Grid courses, i.e. fully functional end-to-end integrated applications that can be reproduced in the more detailed courses by the students.

NA5: CSCS represents Switzerland together with SWITCH at e-IRG.

SA1: Management of Swiss Grid resources, national coordination. Participation in support teams (COD, ROC), Support for MW development and deployment, e.g. support for storage operations (dCache). National support for VOs, new VO support, training and support material for users, contribution to TPM.

JRA1: Security architecture, authorization services, use of SAML in Grid middleware, interoperability Shibboleth-gLite.
Profile of Key Personnel:

Dr. Christoph Witzig, will have the overall responsibility for the SWITCH participation in the EGEE-III project. He was born in 1959, studied high energy physics at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and obtained his PhD in particle physics in 1990 from ETH, while based at CERN. From 1991 to 2000 he worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, NY. Before leaving Brookhaven he was head of the PHENIX Online Computing Group at the relativistic heavy ion collider (RHIC). Upon return to Switzerland in 2000, he worked for a small IT company on data warehousing, before co-founding a private company specializing in open source software and embedded Linux. He joined SWITCH in March 2005, where he is the head of the middleware group, which is involved in Grid activities, authentication and authorization mechanisms (Shibboleth) and PKI. He also led the SWITCH effort in JRA1 in EGEE-II.
SWITCH leads the Swiss Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule Zuerich (ETHZ).

Participant 13: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
CNRS is a major research organisation (largest in France and in Europe), covering all scientific fields, from fundamental sciences to humanities. CNRS is one of the "founding fathers" of the Grid effort in Europe, having been associated with EU DataGrid and all EGEE programs, DEISA, COREGRID, etc.

CNRS will lead NA4 and SA2 in EGEE-III, confirming its now traditional leadership role in the applications and networking sectors. CNRS will play a very active part in SA1 as well with its strong Tier1 center in Lyon and its CIC on-duty role. CNRS will also coordinate the NA3 French effort for training and dissemination. The recent creation of the CNRS "Institut des grilles" (IDG) will allow to boost even further CNRS role in all these areas. www.cnrs.fr http://idgrilles.lal.in2p3.fr.

The CNRS also intends to represent CEA and Healthgrid in particular, which it will represent through the formation of a JRU.
Specific role in the project:

NA2: Maintenance and hosting of EGEE websites.

NA3: Coordinate the French training effort.

NA4: Lead the NA4 activity building on its experience in previous projects. CNRS will contribute to the general support activities, playing a role in VO support and direct user support. It will lead the life science and Grid observatory clusters and participate in the earth science cluster, again building on the experience gained from previous projects.

SA1: Coordination of the French Grid. Participation in the central monitoring and control

SA2: CNRS will lead the SA2 activity, building on its experience in the previous EGEE projects. CNRS will also provide the effort to run the ENOC daily.
Profile of Key Personnel:

Guy Wormser. Director of Institut des Grilles – CNRS. French representative in EGEE, EGEE-II Project management Board. Leader of the French Grid community since 2000. Previous coordinator of EGEE Industry Forum and EGEE Generic Applications Advisory panel.

C. Loomis. NA4 leader. International expertise on GRID software installation, applications software adaptation to Grids.

G. Romier is SA2 deputy leader. International expertise on high speed networks

R. Rumler: French Grid coordination. Manager of Grid operations in one of the largest Grid nodes in the world, CC_IN2P3 in Lyon.

V. Breton Bio sciences application domain leader. International expertise in Bio applications on Grids (malaria, avian flu, etc.)

M. Petitdidier: Earth sciences application domain leader. Key person in creating a very active, diverse and effective earth sciences community using Grids.

Jean-Pierre Meyer is a senior DAPNIA/CEA physicist, involved in the ATLAS experiment at the CERN LHC collider. He had a key role in the very successful launch of the GRIF project, a regional multipurpose Grid in the Paris area now established as a LHC Tier 2. Jean-Pierre Meyer is the present GRIF principal investigator, represents the GRIF community in the various governing instances and is preparing several R&D projects around this facility.
CNRS IDG represents the French Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Institut de Biologie et Chimie des Protéines (IBCP) (UMR5086): Université Claude Bernard Lyon

2. Laboratoire de l'Accélérateur Linéaire (UMR8607) and the Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique - (UMR8623): Université Paris Sud - Paris 11

3. Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire de Clermont Ferrand (UMR6533): Université Blaise Pascal Clermont 2

4. Centre de Recherche et d'Application en Traitement de l'Image (UMR5220): Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1- Ecole INSA Lyon - INSERM (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale)

5. Laboratoire d'Informatique Signaux & Systèmes de Sofia Antipolis (I3S - UMR6070): Université de Nice Sofia Antipolis (UNSA)

6. Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (UMR7154): Université Paris Diderot - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP)

7. Centre de Physique des Particules de Marseille (UMR6550)

8. Laboratoire Annecy le Vieux de Physique des Particules (UMR5814)

9. Laboratoire Nucléaire et Hautes Energies (UMR7585)

10. Le Centre de Calcul de Lyon CC IN2P3 (USR6402)

11. UREC Unité de Réseaux du CNRS (UPS836)

12. Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique

13. Centrale Recherche S.A.

14. Ecole Centrale Paris

15. Association HealthGrid

Participant 14: CGG SERVICES, CGGV
CGGV (www.cggveritas.com) is the world’s leading international pure-play geophysical company delivering a wide range of technologies, services and equipment, to its broad base of customers mainly in the global oil and gas industry. Geophysical Services cover offshore and onshore seismic acquisition, seismic data processing and imaging, as well as reservoir management. CGGV is a recognized leader in data processing and imaging services, made available via a worldwide network of 28 open seismic data processing centers (using more than 400 Tflops in everyday operations) and 15 client-dedicated centers. As part of the EGEE-II activities SA1, CGGV is a member of the French ROC and supports the user, application developer and resource owners who participate in the EGEE-II Grid. CGGV launched the EGEODE initiative to create and animate a VO in the geosciences domain opened to Industry and Academia R&D.
Specific role in the project:

NA2: Improve market perception of Grid and related technology. Provide a business analysis and a business plan adapted to computing resources providers. Prototype and test the proposed architecture (using gLite middleware) in a "real environment" connected to one CGGV processing center. Valid the sustainability of the economic model.

NA4: Earth Science Cluster (see description of ES cluster)

SA1: Operation and operational support of the infrastructure. Deployment and tests of the middleware. Tests of new middleware services at site level or, if necessary, at VO or application level. Support to users (for example on MPI and parallel applications) and VO. Continue and reinforce organisation of site and user training. Internal meeting, cross activities meeting, EGEE conferences and reviews. Dissemination.
Profile of Key Personnel:

Gaël Youinou Development department manager. He is in charge of the coordination of all related Grid projects (including EGEE-I and EGEE-II) for CGGV with a special focus on industry (like Industry Forum) and business aspects.

Jean-Bernard Favreau Senior user support. He is in charge of SA1 activities since the beginning of EGEE-II project. He will continue to work with SA1 in the French ROC to bring our expertise in very large distributed computing resources, focusing in operational tools, monitoring tools and operational support.

Ahmed Beriache Application specialist. He was in charge of SA1 activities during EGEE-I project. He took the responsibility of NA4 activity at the beginning of EGEE-II project. He is also in charge of the EGEODE VO from a user point of view. He will coordinate accompanying activities for a good deployment of EGEE into the geosciences domain (organization of trainings, promotion, feedback and answer to issues coming from industrial companies).
Participant 15: Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, INFN
INFN (http://www.infn.it/) is a public governmental research organization, which promotes, co-ordinates and funds nuclear and high-energy physics related research in Italy. INFN has a considerable experience on high performance distributed computing. Since 2001 INFN has played a major role in the EU DataGrid and DataTAG projects, the CERN based LCG and WLCG projects, the National Grid Projects GRID.IT and LIBI, and more recently the EGEE and EGEE-II and the Grid infrastructure extension projects such as EUmedGRID, EUChinaGRID, EU-IndiaGrid and EELA, GridCC and BioinfoGRID. The INFN contribution to these projects comprises the setup of the INFN Production GRID, with more than 4000 CPU’s deployed in more than 20 sites, the development and reengineering of many the Grid Middleware components already included in gLite, in particular the Workload Management service, the Virtual Organization Membership Service (VOMS), the Glue Schema, the new Web Service CE implementation with CREAM and CEmon, the Grid Accounting service DGAS, the GRID Monitoring service GridICE, and new components like GPBOX, to enforce Grid policies, and StoRM, an SRM interface to parallel file systems, together with dissemination and training activities.
Specific role in the project:

NA2: Organization of events and production of printed and web materials to promote Grids in Italy.

NA3: Contribution to development of course content related in particular to Grid components. General management of the training infrastructure (GILDA) and operation of the Italian sites. Liaison between the GILDA team and the application porting support team.

NA4: Support VO Grid framework development, stress testing, software maintenance and user support. Contribution to ticket handling and documentation. Support to new applications on the GILDA T-infrastructure. Liaison with Regional Grid projects in Italy. Porting of astrophysical applications in Grid. Manage the COMPCHEM VO.

NA5: Collection, integration and elaboration of Italian and other EGEE partners vision and policies. Contribution to standardization activities concerning INFN services.

SA1: Management of the Italian ROC activities. Management, monitoring, accounting and support of resources centers and services in the Italian production Grid. Operation of tools, PPS and Experimental services: deployment of services dedicated to applications (HEP, Bio...). Security coordination for the ROC.

SA2: Overall Networking Coordination in particular relations with NRENs: TNLC, advanced network services, IPv6 follow-up, and Trouble Ticket exchange standardisation.

SA3: Integration packaging and configuration, testing and certification, debugging, analysis, support for gLite components developed in JRA1. Support for batch systems integration with BLAH.

JRA1: INFN will lead this activity. INFN will be responsible for the support and for the further development of the above mentioned services.
Profile of Key Personnel:

Mirco Mazzucato Director of CNAF (INFN Advanced Computing Centre), since 2004. INFN Grid Project Project Manager since 2000. Member of the Project Management Board and coordinator of the Italian Federation in the FP6 European project EGEE (and its successor EGEE II), MIUR Italian delegate in the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group.

Luciano Gaido got his Degree in Physics in 1988 and is working at INFN-Torino since 1991 as responsible for the Network and Computing services. He is member of the INFN-Grid Executive Board and coordinates both the production Grid operations in Italy and the italian Regional Operation Centre within the EGEE project.

Roberto Barbera is Associated Professor at the Catania University. Inside the Italian INFN-Grid project coordinates the GENIUS portal project and the GILDA virtual laboratory for Grid dissemination activities. He is the coordinator of NA4 Generic Applications activities inside the EGEE Project; referee of Journal of Grid Computing; and, since 2001, member of the TERENA Technical Committee for GRID Technology Area.

Francesco Giacomini is graduated in Computer Science at the University of Udine in 1995. Until 2000 he was at CERN, first in the Offline Computing Group of the Delphi Experiment and then in the Trigger/DAQ Group of the ATLAS Experiment. Since 2000 he is with the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, working on Grid computing with a special focus on workload management.
INFN leads the Italian Joint Research Unit whose members include:

1. Ente per le Nuove tecnologie, l’Energia e l’Ambiente (ENEA);

2. Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR);

3. Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF);

4. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV);

5. Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (UNINA);

6. Università della Calabria (UNICAL);

7. Sincrotrone Trieste Societa Consortile per Azioni (ELETTRA);

8. Consorzio COMETA (COMETA);

9. Consorzio COSMOLAB (COSMOLAB);

10. Southern Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructures (SPACI);

11. Consortium GARR (Gestione Ampliamento Rete Ricerca) (GARR);

12. Universita degli Studi di Perugia (UNIPG);

13. Università del Piemonte Orientale "Amedeo Avogadro" (UNIPMN).