Back to Table of contents

Primeur weekly 2012-08-20

ISC Cloud'12 keynote session to investigate Helix Nebula, Europe's Science Cloud

17 Aug 2012 Mannheim - One of the hottest topics in the Cloud computing community is the suitability of such systems for performing the specialized high performance computing capability required by many scientific computing programmes. At the ISC Cloud'12 conference to be held September 24-25, 2012, in Mannheim, the keynote session will feature presentations on how a European Cloud project called the Helix Nebula Initiative is driving discovery in high energy physics, genomics and mitigating risks from natural disasters.

Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud was launched in 2012 initially to support the massive IT requirements of European scientists and create a Cloud-computing market for the public sector in Europe. The Cloud Computing Infrastructure will ultimately provide physical and organizational structures and assets needed for the IT-related operation of research institutions, enterprises, governments and society. This pan-European partnership across academia and industry is working to establish a sustainable European Cloud computing infrastructure, supported by industrial partners, which will provide stable computing capacities and services that elastically meet demand.

The keynote session at ISC Cloud'12 will focus on the first flagship applications being run on the Helix Nebula.

Bob Jones, head of the CERN openlab project, will give an overview of the Helix Nebula initiative, a two-year pilot phase during which procurement processes and governance issues for a framework of public/private partnership will be appraised in a preliminary step towards a European Cloud-based scientific e-infrastructure.
Rupert Lueck, Head of IT Services at the European Microbiology Laboratory in Germany will present "Big data and HPC on-demand: Large-scale genome analysis on Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud".
Wolfgang Lengert of the European Space Agency (ESA) will discuss "ESA Earth Observation flagship project for 'Helix Nebula - the Science Cloud'". During the two-year pilot phase, ESA will use Helix Nebula to elaborate an Earth Observation Platform, from which scientists have "open & free" access to 20 years of radar data from its ERS and Envisat remote-sensing satellites, on-line tools and potential access to other data (e.g. space and in-situ). This science environment will help defining and testing new applications and technologies fostering innovation, enlarging new science findings in the research of earthquakes and volcanoes.

ISC Cloud'12 will be held Monday, September 24, and Tuesday, September 25, at the Dorint Hotel in Mannheim. Registration is now open. A reduced advance registration fee of 350 euro is valid until September 14. Participation is limited and interested attendees are encouraged to register as early as possible.

More information is available at http://www.isc-events.com/cloud12/

Source: ISC Cloud'12