NGS Innovation Forum '10
The two day event will showcase the impact that the NGS has had on research in the UK, allow delegates to find out more about using the NGS in applied research, enable IT staff to find out how their institution can benefit from the NGS, and how you can contribute to and influence the future development of the NGS.
Day 1 is primarily aimed at researchers and will feature presentations from existing NGS users that will demonstrate how the NGS has become a powerful research tool in their area. There will be opportunities for delegates to contribute to the event with a breakout sessions during which feedback will be gathered. NGS staff will be on hand throughout the event to speak to delegates about how the NGS could aid their research etc and, for existing users, offering up to the minute advice on optimising your jobs on the NGS.
Day 2 is primarily aimed at those responsible for delivering IT services in their institutions. It will focus on the benefits to an institution of NGS membership and how institutions can get involved with the NGS. There will be presentations on the novel technologies already available on the NGS as well as NGS services such as accounting as well as European developments.
The event will be held at STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Didcot near Oxford. A drinks reception will be held the first evening followed by a meal at a local restaurant (transport will be provided). We are grateful to the UK e-Science Engineering Taskforce Network (ETF) for assistance with sponsoring this event.
| Day 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Title | |
| 9am - 10am | Registration and coffee | |
| 10am - 10.05am | Welcome and housekeeping |
Claire Devereux, STFC RAL |
| 10.05am - 10.20am | Campus Champions | Steven Young, NGS, University of Oxford |
| 10.20am - 11am |
NGS tool demo- Transcriptome Analysis using the NGS User Interface /Workload Management System (UI/WMS) The UI/WMS is a tool which allows users to easily submit jobs to the whole of the NGS relying on the WMS to chose which NGS resources to use for their jobs. Use of the UI/WMS will be demonstrated with a user case study in which analysis time of mRNA was decreased from a month to less than 12 hours. |
Jonathan Churchill, NGS, STFC RAL |
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NGS tool demo - Accessing the NGS using the Application Hosting Environment (AHE) An overview of how access to the NGS can be simplified using the Application Hosting Environment, a lightweight application portal system. |
Stefan Zasada, UCL | |
| 11am - 11.30am | Coffee | |
| 11.30am - 12.30pm | ||
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NGS tool demo - Using databases on the NGS An overview of the databases supported on the NGS, what offerings and advantages these give users and case studies of how NGS users are taking advantage of them. |
Simon Collins, NGS, University of Manchester | |
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NGS tool demo - The NGS from the CCP4 desktop The NGS R&D theme have been working to build access to the NGS into the desktop tools that researchers use on a day-to-day basis, in this presentation we look at the example of CCP4: Software for Macromolecular X-Ray Crystallography. |
Matteo Turilli, NGS, University of Oxford | |
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NGS Tool demo - The NGS Cloud pilots, their structure, users and lessons learned The NGS has been working with two partners, Edinburgh and Oxford for the provision of two Infrastructure as a Service clouds. These have been available to users for the last few months and we are now able to draw conclusions about the usecases we have been working with so far. We will also discuss how these fit into other cloud services available, either private or public and the various tools available. |
Dr David Wallom, NGS Technical Director | |
| 12.30pm - 1.30pm | Lunch | |
| 1.30pm - 2.10pm | Discipline-based workshops | |
| 2.10pm - 3.30pm |
User presentation - Computer modelling of composite structures using NGS facilities The presentation will focus on running large computer jobs using ABAQUS/Explicit available on the NGS, which cover various composite structures subjected to impact and blast. |
Zhongwei Guan, University of Liverpool |
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User presentation - Running the social learning strategies tournament on the NGS We recently ran an international computer tournament on the evolution of learning, and in this talk I will describe how I used the NGS to run over 100,000 simulations after the tournament proved more popular than anticipated. |
Luke Rendell, University of St. Andrews | |
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User presentation - Early stages on drug discovery and the NGS In this talk I will be presenting two different projects aimed at the discovery of novel therapeutic agents and how this research was conducted on the NGS infrastructure. |
Narcis Fernandes-Fuentes, University of Leeds | |
| 3.30pm - 4pm | Coffee | |
| 4pm - 4.20pm |
Workshop report back |
|
| 4.20pm - 4.30pm |
NGS tool demo - The new CertWizard - the easy approach to certificates We present the new certificate management tool. For years, the NGS CA has been browser-based, but browsers are not good at managing certificates. With this tool, managing certificates becomes simple and fun. |
Jens Jensen, NGS, STFC RAL |
| 4.30pm - 4.50pm |
This presentation will look at the focus of activities for the NGS for the coming 2-3 years and possible longer term opportunities. |
Neil Geddes, Director of the NGS |
| 4.50pm - 5pm | Day 1 summing up | |
| 5pm - 6.30pm |
Drinks reception and poster viewing / voting Posters |
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| 7.15pm | Dinner at a curry house, Abingdon. Buses will leave at 7.15pm and will return delegates to STFC RAL later in the evening. | |
| Day 2 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Time | Title | |
| 10am - 10.15am | Welcome to Day 2 | David Wallom, Technical Director of the NGS |
| 10.15am - 10.45am |
NGS site presentation - What the University of Westminster gained from being a NGS Partner Site The University of Westminster joined NGS in 2007 as a partner site. Being a partner site is very different than being a core site and this presentation will overview the challenges and experiences of the University of Westminster as a partner site. The presentation will also outline how we identify prospective users at the University of Westminster and what kind of application support and technical services we provide for local users to port and run their applications on NGS resources. |
Prof. Stephen Winter, Director of the Centre for Parallel Computing, University of Westminster |
| 10.45am - 11.15am | Coffee | |
| 11.15am - 12pm | Facilitating collaboration through the NGS (discussion session) | David Wallom, NGS Technical Director |
| 12pm - 12.30pm |
Federated Access to NGS resources This talk will demonstrate how to use NGS resources using your institutional login credentials (via the UK Access Management Federation). It will describe how the UK's two main eScience authentication systems are combined to form an easy to use yet robust identity management environment. It will discuss how this mechanism links together with system, project and VO registration procedures. |
Mike Jones - NGS, University of Manchester |
| 12.30pm - 1pm |
Accounting services and solutions for partners How accounting is supported on the NGS, the different choices available for partners to report accounting information and the information and tools that are available to partners that choose to do so. |
Simon Collins, NGS, University of Manchester |
| 1pm - 2pm | Lunch | |
| 2pm - 2.30pm |
EGI.eu as an operational entity and the EGI-InSPIRE project are now 6 months old. This presentation provides an opportunity to reflect on the experiences of the first 6 months and provide an overview for the plans that have now been established for future years. |
Steven Newhouse - EGI Director |
| 2.30pm - 3pm |
EU project presentation - CLARIN: National infrastructure requirements for language resources and tools This presentation will consider what is necessary at the national level to support CLARIN, a European infrastructure providing services relating to language resources and tools to researchers in the Humanities and Social Sciences. |
Martin Wynne, University of Oxford |
| 3pm - 3.30pm |
European project presentation - ELIXIR: A sustainable infrastructure for biological information in Europe The talk will introduce ELIXIR, explain is origins and rationale, cover achievements to date and the opportunities for the future. |
Andrew Lyall, European Bioinformatics Institute |
| 3.30pm - 3.45pm | Farewell | |
