Common use of Concept and Project Objectives Clause in Contracts

Concept and Project Objectives. The aim of e-ScienceTalk is to build on the significant achievements of the “GridTalk: co-ordinating grid reporting across Europe” project in bringing the success stories of Europe’s e-Infrastructure to policy makers in government and business, to the broader scientific community and to the general public. The key challenges will be to work with the emerging European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) ecosystem as it becomes established, to maintain and enhance the high quality of the existing GridTalk outputs, to report on the interactions of grid computing with other e-Infrastructures, such as cloud computing and supercomputing and to explore the long-term sustainability of e-ScienceTalk’s products. Background to the project Over the last 10 years, the European Commission and governments across Europe have invested hundreds of millions of Euros in scientific grid computing and e-Infrastructures. European scientists now have access to state-of-the-art computational and data resources located around the globe, putting European research into a world-leading position. These grid and interacting e-Infrastructures allow Europe to benefit from research that addresses the greatest challenges facing the planet today, such as climate change, pandemics and sustainable energy. Grid infrastructures are now moving towards a sustainable and more user-centric model through the European Grid Infrastructure, which will integrate national operations at a European level. During this transition, it is essential to keep the achievements and impact of grid, distributed and high performance computing at the forefront of people’s minds, through dissemination projects that cross national and even international boundaries. While the first phase of GridTalk focused principally on communicating the benefits, success stories and challenges of grid computing, e-ScienceTalk will expand its focus outwards from a central core of grid computing to cover the interactions and offerings from other e-Infrastructures, such as cloud computing, the supercomputing networks of DEISA and PRACE and the networking layer of GÉANT. This blurring of boundaries is being increasingly driven by the needs of users, such as the life sciences and fusion communities, and the future users represented by the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) projects. By broadening its approach in this way, e-ScienceTalk will increase its relevance to the general public, policy makers and the broader scientific community, helping to ensure continued public support for the European e-Infrastructures activities, as outlined by the EC for 2020 and beyond. Expected results