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Abstract

BeSTGRID (Broadband enabled Science and Technology GRID) is a NZ Tertiary Education Commission Innovation and Development Fund project which builds true eResearch capability on the new Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network.

BeSTGRID will deliver mechanisms, methods and tools that facilitate collaboration on shared information, sharing of computational resources and online visualization of instruments and experiments. There is an emphasis on developing virtual research environments for exemplars in international collaboration through the use of technologies such as EVO, AccessGRID, JSR168 Portlets, SAKAI, Shibboleth, Globus, and SRB. The project is also largely following the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing GRID architecture to facilitate possible future interoperability.

BeSTGRID focuses on how to make eResearch work, to create a fully-functional eResearch ecosystem for New Zealand.

About the speakers

Nick Jones' interests lie in the application of ICT to science and problems of scale in industry. Nick is R&D Strategist for the Network Design and Simulation research Group (based within the Engineering Science faculty at Auckland), Chief Technical Officer for e-learnings (a University of Auckland business developing tools for the education sector), and Project Manager for the BeSTGRID www.bestgrid.org project which is tasked with establishing New Zealand's e-research infrastructure. Nick also manages commercially focused research contracts within the Centre for Software Innovation www.csi.ac.nz.

Sam Searle is the E-Research Development Coordinator at Victoria University of Wellington. She is working with academic and support staff across the university to foster an e-research culture and maximise use of New Zealand's new Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN). Her work at VUW includes information sharing, strategic planning, facilitating demonstrator projects, and promoting the use of grid technologies. Sam is also active in NZ's emerging e-research community: she recently joined the BeSTGRID Steering Committee and worked as a consultant on the Advanced Network Capability Building Roadmap 2007-2009. Sam is a qualified librarian and spent four years managing collaborative digital projects at the National Library of New Zealand prior to taking up her role at VUW.