National Institute for Environmental eScience. Environmental eScience: NIEeS Summer School 2004

NIEeS Summer School 2004

12–16 July 2004

General information

The NIEeS Summer School 2004 will take place in Cambridge on 12–16 July 2004. The idea of this year's summer school is to look in detail at some escience data issues for environmental science research, with the aim of equipping each participant to be able to run the same tools as part of their research programme in their own institutes.

The NIEeS Summer School will primarily be aimed at post-doctoral and senior post-graduate workers who use computer modelling and data management of any form in their research. It is assumed that the participants have a working knowledge of unix, but there will be no expectation that they will have a knowledge of particular programming languages or of any of the grid tools.

The programme will consist of morning lectures and afternoon practical sessions, with a number of invited lectures to provide illustrations of the tools and to give a wider perspective of the UK environmental escience programme.

Programme, 12–16 July

The programme begins with registration prior to lunch time on Monday 12th July, and ends at lunch time on Friday 16th July. The programme to far (subject to small changes) is

Monday 12 July

12.00	Registration and lunch
13.30	Welcome and general introduction
13.45	Grid overview from a commercial perspective: series of talks by representatives from IBM
15.15	Coffee/tea break
15.45	Grid overview continued
17.00	Student presentations part 1 (see note 1)
18.15	Evening meal in Churchill College

Tuesday 13 July

9.30	Student presentations part 2 (see note 1)
10.00	Authorisation and authentication on the Grid (Martin Keegan & Martin Dove, NIEeS)
11.00	Coffee break
11.30	Introduction to Grid data technologies with demonstrations (Martin Dove. NIEeS)
12.30	Lunch
14.00	Practical session: Data portals, metadata editor, Storage Resource Broker (see note 2)
16.30	Punt trip through the Cambridge Backs (see note 3)
18.15	Evening meal in Churchill College

Wednesday 14 July

9.30	Introduction to web services (Martin Keegan, NIEeS)
10.00	Database basics (Martin Keegan, NIEeS)
10.30	Open Grid Services Architecture [pdf] (Neil Chue Hong, NeSC)
11.00	Coffee break
11.30	OGSA-DAI (Neil Chue Hong, NeSC)
12.30	Lunch
14.00	Practical session: OGSA-DAI
16.45	Walking tour around Cambridge (see note 3)
18.15	Evening meal in Churchill College

Thursday 15 July

9.30	Data management in the University: the Dspace project (tba)
10.30	Introduction to XML (Keiran Millard, HR Wallingford Ltd)
11.00	Coffee break
11.30	XML and environmental data management (Keiran Millard, HR Wallingford Ltd)
12.30	Lunch
14.00	Practical session: XML
17.30	Tour of the Churchill archives (see note 4)
19.00	Drinks reception in Churchill College
19.30	Formal dinner in Churchill College

Friday 16 July

9.30	The GODIVA escience project (Lakshmi Sastry, CCLRC)
10.30	Introduction to the Access Grid (Martin Keegan & Martin Dove, NIEeS)
11.00	Coffee break and Access Grid demonstration
11.30	Data management and access (Stuart Ballard, NIEeS)
12.00	Question & answer session and summary (see note 5)
12.30	Lunch and close

Notes

We would like participants to tell us something about their work in order to help dynamic tuning of the summer school. Ideally most participants will feel able to talk for a few minutes each. To ensure that these two sessions flow well, we would like to restrict all participants to 3 powerpoint slides each: one to give the overall context, one to outline any successes, and one to outline any problems. Please email the NIEeS science coordinator, Stuart Ballard with details, and importantly please send your slides by email.
For the practical sessions, we will use a set of standard examples, but we are keen to help people to with their own examples. Ideally participants should discuss their work with us before coming to assess whether they would be suitable for trying out at the summer school; please email the NIEeS science coordinator, Stuart Ballard.
Cambridge is a very beautiful historic city. For a taster, try looking at our picture gallery.
Churchill College is the national repository of the papers of Winston Churchill, and also contains a number of other important collections of papers.
We would like to discuss questions through the week, but it would be useful to air some general issues at the end of the school.

Location

The Summer School will be held at both Churchill College Cambridge (accommodation and breakfast & evening meals) and the Centre for Mathematical Sciences Cambridge (lectures and lunches). Practical sessions will take place in a computer room in the centre of Cambridge.

Details of the location, including travel plans, can be obtained here.

	Centre for Mathematical Sciences, main entrance.
	Churchill College from the junction with the main road. The entrance is on the right hand side of this photograph.

Follow-on

It is anticipated that the NIEeS Summer School will generate some follow-on activities. We will discuss the sort of follow-on activities that could be arranged, such as follow-on visits to NIEeS in installation and usage. We could, for example, have a small session whereby we help people to remotely install some of the tools on computers in their home institutes. We could also have a follow-on user meeting where people share experience and problems, with the aim of providing some practical solutions.

Registration

There is no registration charge, and all accommodation and meals will be provided at no charge. Registration is essential and must be done using our on-line form.

Please book early to ensure that you are able to obtain a place.

Contact and further information

For information about registration, and all other types of queries, please contact the NIEeS office in the first instance.

Last update: Thu, Jul 1, 2004