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CCLRC to play pivotal role in e-science

November 22, 2000

CCLRC (Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils) welcomes the government's announcement today that offers extra funding for e-science. The extra £5 million over three years awarded to CCLRC will enable it to drive the development of e-science as a key technology for the next generation of major scientific facilities at the laboratory's sites, and to encourage and co-ordinate cross-disciplinary e-science activities.

Current and future facilities such as the ISIS pulsed neutron source and the new synchrotron, Diamond, will create ever increasing amounts of data which need to be processed, transported, stored and visualised, and CCLRC is committed to being at the forefront of the new computing technology to achieve this. E-science offers new possibilities for stimulating cross-disciplinary research through the provision of a common Grid infrastructure; with its own broadly based scientific programme, CCLRC will play a key role in this.

CCLRC took the UK into the flagship EU project named DataGrid. This European e-science computing activity focuses on transparent access to geographically dispersed data; application pilots cover genomics, earth observation and particle physics.

Within the DataGrid project, and in other areas, CCLRC is already active in developing the new technology and in setting up elements of the new computing infrastructure, and it has established collaborations with other institutes. One example is with Birkbeck College, London, where Professor Julia Goodfellow will be working with CCLRC to develop remote control of data collection, analysis, and refinement for studies in structural biology and materials sciences.
“This is excellent news and will enable the UK crystallography community to maintain its international standing. Such automation will be important for the development of structural genomics projects,” she said.

Commenting on the funding announcement Dr Gordon Walker, CCLRC’s Chief Executive Officer, said,
“E-science will change the dynamic of the way science is undertaken, and CCLRC will play a leading role in developing and deploying the new technology. The extra funding will enable us to give our users unparalleled access to our facilities, enable us to produce highly trained people in this field, and allow full exploitation of our knowledge and advances for the benefit of business and commerce as well as for science and technology”.

Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)