May Feature Stories
NCSA Researchers Explore Stars In The Making
With support from NCSA's Strategic Applications Program, an NCSA researcher and UIUC astronomy faculty member extends both his code and his research.
NCSA Officially Supports GSI-Enabled Remote Login for Grid Users Across All High-End Systems
NCSA now officially supports a new authentication method for remote login to its high-end systems using X.509 proxy certificates, the de facto standard for authentication in the Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI). This capability allows users to login to computing resources at NCSA and elsewhere "on the grid," including TeraGrid systems, with a single sign-on at the start of their session. The deployment is part of NCSA's ongoing efforts to support new uses of its high-end systems.
News Stories for May
Next Alliance Allocation Application Deadline July 15
The next review board meeting for Alliance allocations will be held on September 7-8, 2005. The deadline for the next round of proposals is July 15. Principal investigators will be notified of their awards by September 30, 2005.
NSF Cyberinfrastructure Team (CI-Team) Solicits Project Proposals by May 27
The purpose of the newly-created NSF CI-TEAM is to join the national science and engineering community in supporting projects designed to prepare current and future scientists and engineers to create, advance, and exploit cyberinfrastructure. The first CI-TEAM solicitation seeks promising demonstration project proposals from partnerships of organizations committed to the preparation of a diverse cyberinfrastructure-savvy science and engineering workforce. Following merit review of the proposals received, NSF will select for support between 10 and 20 projects that together address a rich mix of cyberinfrastructure-related workforce dimensions, and that promise to serve as pathfinders to effective larger-scale implementation activities in the future. Full proposals are due May 27 by 5 PM (the researcher's local time).
John Towns to Lead Persistent Infrastructure Directorate at NCSA
NCSA has announced that John Towns will lead the center's Persistent Infrastructure (PI) Directorate, which provides scientists and engineers with accessible, robust, easy-to-use high-end computing and data resources interconnected with high-performance networks. Towns has been serving as interim senior associate director of PI since 2004. Prior to his current appointment, Towns led NCSA's Scientific Computing Division. He has held a number of management and research positions within NCSA since joining the center in 1992.
NCSA To Host Reconfigurable Systems Seminar, Summer Institute
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications will bring together researchers in the area of reconfigurable systems for a five-day workshop this July. The Reconfigurable Systems Summer Institute, July 11-15, will explore the current state of the art in the use of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) co-processors to significantly speed algorithms and will also look farther ahead at the potential of reconfigurable systems to radically alter supercomputing. The RSSI is sponsored by NCSA's Innovation Systems Laboratory, which provides early access to, and evaluation of, future generations of computing systems, hardware, and software. The Innovative Systems Laboratory recently joined the steering committee of OpenFPGA, an organization that fosters the use of FPGA technology in high-level applications by bringing together FPGA leaders and pioneers. OpenFPGA is led by the Ohio Supercomputer Center at Springfield, Ohio. Information on the RSSI will be posted online as it becomes available.
Nominations Sought For Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards
The Women of Vision Awards highlight women making innovative contributions to technology. Three women will be recognized for demonstrating excellence in one of three categories: Innovation, Social Impact, and Leadership. Nominations should be submitted by May 15; see website for more details and the nomination form.
Software Releases
Globus Toolkit 4.0 Released
The Globus Consortium has announced the release of Globus Toolkit, version 4.0 (GT4), developed by the Globus Alliance. The Globus Toolkit is an open-standards building block for enterprise-level Grid implementations. The GT4 release includes all of the necessary tools for building an enterprise Grid. Key additions to GT4 include compliance with the latest Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Web services standards, initial support for authorization standards including SAML and XACML, implementation of the Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF) and Web Services Notification (WS-N) specifications, and sophisticated authorization and "enterprise ready" security capabilities.
GRIDS Center Releases PURSe
The GRIDS Center has announced the release of PURSe (Portal-based User Registration System), now available for download. PURSe is a system for registering users of Web-based applications that use the Grid Security Infrastructure (based on PKI and X.509 certificates). PURSE coordinates the process of establishing Grid security certificates for new users when logging in to an application web site. Users who already have valid certificates can also easily register with the portal applications. By leveraging the MyProxy certificate repository, PURSe shields web application users from the complexities of X.509 certificate management, and enables rapid registration of users.
Conferences, Workshops, and Training Events
HiPC 2005 Deadline Extended to May 9
The deadline for paper submissions to the International Conference on High-Performance Computing has been extended to May 9, with deadlines for workshops, tutorials, etc. in following weeks. The conference will take place December 18-21 in Goa, India.
Submissions for GAMW2005 due by May 15
The Applications and Middleware Grid Workshop (GAMW2005) will be held Sept. 11-14 in Poznan, Poland, in conjunction with the Sixth International Confernece on Parallel Processing and Applied Mathematics (PPAM 2005). GAMW2005 seeks to provide a bridge between the application community and the developers and directors of grid policies and infrastructures. The workshop results will provide input to middleware and infrastructure developers. Papers from different areas of grid computing, especially those concerned with applications and collaborative environments on the grid, are being sought. Authors should submit full papers (draft version, Postscript or PDF file) to workshop chair Ewa Deelman at gamw@man.poznan.pl before May 15.
May 17 Cyberinfrastructure Seminar to Address Integrating HDF and SRB
As part of the Cyberinfrastructure Seminar Series sponsored by NCSA and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), NCSA software developer Peter Cao will give a presentation on Integrating HDF with the SRB from 1 to 2:30 p.m. (CST) on May 17 in Room 3414 of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The seminar will also be presented via the Access Grid.
Register for next Linux Clusters Institute Workshop by May 20
The next LCI Workshop will take place at June 21-24, 2005 at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma. The deadline for registration is May 20. As always, space is limited; register ASAP.
Tapia Conference Deadline Extended to May 20
The 2005 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference, which offers a number of opportunities for students to attend the conference and participate in the conference program, has extended the deadline for applications for scholarships to cover the cost of attending the event, as well as proposals for posters and Birds-of-a-Feather sessions. The new deadline is Friday, May 20. The conference will be held October 19-22 in Albuquerque, NM.
Register for ISC2005 by May 21
Early registration has opened for the International Supercomputing Conference, which will be held June 21-24 in Heidelberg, Germany. The deadline for early registration is May 21.
Registration Open for 2005 NCSI Summer Workshops
Online registration is now available for the 2005 slate of summer workshops offered by The National Computational Science Institute. Workshop topics will focus on computational science education in a variety of fields, as well as interdisciplinary computational science education. Workshops will run if 12 people register prior to the specified notification date. Registration will remain open until the workshop is full or until 21 days prior to the workshop, which ever occurs first. See the website for the full list of workshops and important deadlines.
Register for the SDSC Computing Institute by June 27
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) will host its 11th Annual SDSC Computing Institute, July 25-29, 2005. SDSC has a nationally known reputation for providing researchers with a solid introduction to the benefits of high-end computing. The Computing Institute will provide researchers with an introduction to the concepts and tools available in established and new technologies for the creation, manipulation dissemination and analysis of large data sets. These lectures and hands-on laboratory sessions led by experts from the SDSC's staff as well as other institutions will introduce researchers to technology that can help them reach their goals faster and more efficiently. The deadline for submitting applications is June 27; more details are available at the website.
Submit Papers for eScience 2005 by August 15
The e-Science 2005 conference, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee for Scalable Computing (TCSC) and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, is designed to bring together leading international and interdisciplinary research communities, developers, and users of e-Science applications and enabling IT technologies. The conference serves as a forum to present the results of the latest research and product/tool developments, and highlight related activities from around the world. The conference will be held December 5-8 in Melbourne, Australia; the deadline for submitting papers is August 15. See the website for guidelines.
Housing Registration Open for SC2005
SC05 Housing is now open. Book your conference housing early to be assured of the best location and room rates. SC05 reservations for conference housing can be made through the Seattle Housing Bureau website or by calling the housing bureau. SC2005 will take place November 12-18 in Seattle, Washington.
