Keynote Speakers

Peter Coveney
Krzysztof Kurowski
Rajiv Ramnath

Peter Coveney

Prof Peter V. Coveney holds a chair in Physical Chemistry, is an Honorary Professor in Computer Science at University College London (UCL) and is Professor Adjunct at Yale University School of Medicine (USA). He is Director of the Centre for Computational Science (CCS) and of the Computational Life and Medical Sciences Network (CLMS) at UCL. Coveney is active in a broad area of interdisciplinary research including condensed matter physics and chemistry, materials science, as well as life and medical sciences in all of which high performance computing plays a major role. He has led many large scale projects, including the EPSRC RealityGrid e-Science Pilot Project (2001-05) and its extension as a Platform Grant (2005-09); he is also PI on several current grants from EPSRC and other agencies, including the the role of Coordinator of the EU FP7 Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) Network of Excellence (2008-13). He has been the recipient of many US NSF and DoE as well as European supercomputing awards (from DEISA and PRACE), which provide access to several petascale computers. Coveney chairs the UK Collaborative Computational Projects Steering Panel and has served on programme committees of many conferences, including the 2002 Nobel Symposium on Self-Organisation; he was Chair of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2008, and of the Discrete Simulation of Fluid Dynamics conference 2003. He has published more than 400 scientific papers and co-authored two best-selling books (The Arrow of Time and Frontiers of Complexity, both with Roger Highfield) and is lead author of the first textbook on Computational Biomedicine (Oxford University Press, 2014). Coveney is a founding member of the UK Government’s E-Initiative Leadership Council and a Medical Academy Nominated Expert to the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology on Data, Algorithms and Modelling which led to the creation of the UK Turing Institute.

Keynote: Exploiting International e-Infrastructures for Large Scale Computational Science

Abstract: The Centre for Computational Science at University College London is concerned with many aspects of theoretical and computational science, from chemistry and physics to materials, life sciences and informatics. Our different computational techniques span time and length-scales from the macro-, through the meso- and to the nano- and microscales. Our science ranges from multiscales materials modelling, with applications in the oil industry, aerospace and automotive industries, and which have involved some of the largest fully atomistic molecular dynamics simulations ever conducted, to patient specific health care, where simulations based on high performance computating could one day be used to support the clinical decision making process. In pursuing these research interests, CCS researchers routinely make use of globally distributed petascale computing resources, cloud infrastructures, high performance visualisation, and the high bandwidth, low latency networks needed to support such novel computational methods.

The vast range and scale of resources available mean that we have had to develop mechanisms to automate and manage the execution of complex chains of high performance simulations through workflow tools. In addition, our simulation techniques both rely on and produce vast amounts of data, which need to be moved around the globe and archived. The question of data is especially relevant in the case of medical simulation scenarios, where extra constraints are placed on what can be done with data and how it can be used.

Krzysztof Kurowski

Krzysztof Kurowski, holds the PhD degree in Computer Science. He graduated from Poznan University of Technology. He has been leading Applications Department at Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center in Poland since 2008. He has been actively involved in many international R&D projects in the area of computer science, HPC, and applied ICT. He was a research visitor at University of Queensland, Argonne National Lab, or CCT Louisiana University. His research activities are focused on advanced applications, high performance computing simulations, scheduling and resource management in networked environments. Recently, he has been actively involved in the field e-learning and digital education. He was a technical coordinator in the national project for open educational resources and e-textbooks for all K12 schools in Poland.

Keynote: Science Gateways over the last decade – lessons learned and best practices from the QCG middleware, applications and portal technologies

Abstract: Latest achievements and software solutions significantly simplified the use of large scale and distributed computing environments. We have been successfully created various application tools and the QCG (Quality in Cloud and Grid) middleware to use HPC and Cloud in a straightforward and transparent way for the user. During this talk I will share the best practices and lessons learned after creating jointly with user communities many domain-specific Science Gateways, e.g. dedicated for physicists, medical scientists, chemists, engineers and external communities performing multi-scale simulations. As our deployed software solutions have to be constantly maintained and updated, I will also show how changing technologies, visual design and user experience could impact the way we should re-design Science Getaways or even develop new attractive tools for users, e.g. desktop or mobile-based applications in the near future.

Rajiv Ramnath

Rajiv Ramnath is a Program Director in the Software cluster at the Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI) at the National Science Foundation. He is also a Professor of Practice in Computer Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University where he has extensively collaborated with industry and other departments on research and education programs. Prior to this he worked for many years in industry, leading government-funded research and commercial product development. His industry R&D lab, almost unbeknownst to him, turned into a startup, so Rajiv ended up as an entrepreneur, and so, in addition to his academic work, he has also advised large and small businesses and startups on computing and information technology strategies. At NSF, Rajiv seeks to further the Software cluster’s mission of making scientific software an integral and sustainable part of the national scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem.

Keynote: Software Programs at the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and Software Gateways.

Abstract: The Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) seeks to encourage, support and incentivize its community to create a sustainable national scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. In keeping with this intent OAC’s software programs seek to holistically promote **software-centric** ecosystems that are seen by stakeholder communities as their primary means of furthering and accelerating their science. These software ecosystems comprise reusable software components and frameworks along with a highly-capable workforce. This workforce both uses as well as contributes to this software thus sustaining the ecosystem.

The Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program has been the flagship software program within OAC. In 2016 the SI2 program made a major, multi-million dollar award to establish the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI), a multi-institutional consortium that will serve as a long-term community hub for gateway development, sustainability and education in order to increase the capabilities, number and sustainability of science gateways.

This talk seeks to present an overview of OAC’s programs, in particular its software programs, with a focus on the special role of gateways.