The European e-Infrastructure user meeting

As the next phase of the European Grid Initiative (EGI) moves towards its launch on May 1st, the final annual EGEE User Forum is being held in Uppsala next week, April 12-15. Europe will be showcasing cutting edge research as well as hosting presentations from across the academic world and industry. The EGEE 5th User Forum will help to pave the way to the EGI by expanding its focus to cover a broader scope of European e-infrastructures and distributed computing technologies, providing an opportunity for the first time to all user communities to meet, interact and collaborate.

During the six years and three phases of the Enabling Grids for EsciencE project, the EGEE infrastructure has become an important resource for thousands of users across the globe. The User Forum is an opportunity for those researchers to showcase their achievements. This year the conference will feature a host of impressive applications, from grid interfaces on iPhones and groups running grid software on Play Station 3s to research teams using the grid to fight the two biggest killers in the world: cancer and heart disease.

The EGEE project will come to a close at the end of April 2010. A new organisation, EGI.eu, was established in Amsterdam on 8th February and will in the future coordinate the operation of the European grid computing infrastructures, supported initially through the EGI-InSPIRE project. Bob Jones, EGEE’s Project Director says “This is the final major event for EGEE after a decade of work culminating in the creation of a permanent structure for distributed computing in Europe.”

Steven Newhouse, Interim Director of EGI.eu and Project Director of EGI-InSPIRE says ”This is an exciting time for the provision of e-infrastructures for European researchers. EGI.eu aims to provide a coordination and service delivery focus for this community that is not aligned to any particular community or technology and will be sustainable for the years to come. The support of the European Commission through the EGI-InSPIRE project during this transition is critical in achieving these goals.”

EGEE is internationally recognised as a leader in its field and has repeatedly attracted prominent figures as keynote speakers to the User Forum. This year’s event features distinguished keynote speakers from user communities (CERN - home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, which recently commenced 7TeV collisions, ITER - the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor being built in in Cadarache, France) and industry (Microsoft) as well as the European Commission.

You can follow the progress of the meeting through the User Forum website, the Gridcast Blog, Flickr and Twitter.