GRIDs AROUND ASIA

Session: International Collaboration
Thursday, 16 April 2009

0900-0930
“Update on Grid and HPC Activities in China”
Speaker: Prof. Ma Yan (Beijing University of Post & Telecommunications, China)

Abstract
TBA

Biodata
Professor Ma Yan works at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications(BUPT), Beijing, China. He is actively involved in the China Next Generation Internet (CNGI) project and in promoting Grid computing research. He is the ex-Convenor of APECTEL DSG during 2007 to 2008.

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0930-1000
“BIRUNI GRID: The First HPC resource contribution for Academic Grid Malaysia and EUAsiaGrid (an EU-FP7 Support Action Project)”
Speaker: Dr. Suhaimi Napis Associate Professor & Director of InfoComm Development Centre (Universiti Putra Malaysia)

Abstract
An HPC resource of up to 400 cores has been provided by Universiti Putra Malaysia for the Academic Grid community in Malaysia. The facility consists three blade-based clusters: main cluster of 256 cores with GE interconnects; specialised cluster of 64 cores with Infiniband interconnects; and sandbox cluster of 40 cores. The facility attempts to provide application users and core researchers full access to the entire ecosystem of grid computing and upholds the principle of Academic Grid Initiative main goal as A Learning and Discovery Grid especially for institutions of higher learning in Malaysia with Malaysian Research and Education Network (MYREN) providing the interconnectivity. Together with its international partners, BIRUNI GRID also opens its resources to research communities especially under the EUAsiaGrid Project. At the initial stage BIRUNI GRID will support bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and cheminformatics research domains and also animation rendering. It will also focus on development of new user community in culture and heritage.

Biodata
Dr. Suhaimi Napis is an associate professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences as well as Director, InfoComm Development Centre, Universiti Putra Malaysia. He is also a Director, E-Research Area, MYREN.

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1000-1030
“GEO Grid - IT Platform to Satisfy Diversified Users' Demand”
Speaker: Satoshi Sekiguchi (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology, Japan)

Abstract
TBA

Biodata
Satoshi Sekiguchi received his BS degree from Department of Information Science, Faculty of Science, the University of Tokyo in 1982 and MSE from University of Tsukuba in 1984, respectively. He joined Electrotechnical Laboratory, Agency of Industrial Science and Technology in 1984 to engage research in high performance and parallel computing widely from the computer architecture, compiler, numerical algorithm, performance evaluation as well as its applications. He served as the deputy director of Research Institute of Information Technology, AIST in 2001, and was the founding director of Grid Technology Research Center (GTRC), AIST since 2002. He is a member of IEEE, SIAM, and IPSJ.

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1100-1130
“Building a Grid Services Ecosystem”
Speaker: Dr. Hing-Yan Lee Program Director (National Grid Office, Singapore)

Abstract
In June 2008, three commercial grid service providers were appointed to commence provisioning of software, hardware, and storage on a utility basis to users from government, enterprises to small-and-medium sized businesses and individuals. We also establish a SaaS Incubation Centre to provide business and technical consultancy as well as a platform for software ISVs to SaaS-enable their applications. Upon graduation, these SaaS software will be hosted by one of the three grid service providers. This talk will share about the progress made since general availability in November 2008 and the efforts to promote adoption.

Biodata
Dr. Hing-Yan Lee is Program Director of National Grid Office at the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, where he directs, plans and coordinates the national initiative to realize a cyber-infrastructure for sharing and aggregating compute resources for R&D, business and industry. He is concurrently seeding Cloud Computing efforts, including Singapore's participation as a centre of excellence as part of the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing Testbed. Prior to this role, Hing Yan was Deputy Director of National Grid Office at the Agency of Science, Technology And Research as well as Principal Scientist at the Institute for Infocomm Research. He was previously Director of Knowledge Lab and Deputy Director of Japan-Singapore Artificial Intelligence Centre at the Kent Ridge Digital Labs (KRDL). He oversaw and managed industry collaborations and applied R&D in machine translation, spoken language dialogue, expert systems on the Internet, knowledge discovery, and other knowledge-driven efforts. Prior to KRDL, Hing Yan was Deputy Director at the Information Technology Institute, the applied R&D arm of the National Computer Board.

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1130-1200
"e-Science Development in Taiwan"
Speaker: Dr. Simon Lin Director, Computing Centre (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) & Eric Yen Technical Manager (Academia Sinica Grid Center, Taiwan)

Abstract
TBA

Biodata
Dr. Simon Lin is Director of Computing Centre, Academia Sinica and the Executive Officer of the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium. He is also the Chair of the General Support Division, which supports the infrastructure operation and maintenance of Taiwan's National Digital Archives Program. Simon Lin received his PhD degree from Edinburgh University in Theoretical Physics.

His research interests include Computational Physics and Scientific Computing, Statistical Physics and Field theory, Grid Computing, Metadata and Digital Archives. He is also an adjunct professor in several universities.

Biodata
Eric Yen is Technical Manager conducting the e- Science infrastructure, core technology and application development in Academia Sinica Grid Center, and to support broader collaboration within Taiwan and with Asia and Europe.

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1200-1230
"ThaiGrid in the Transition Period and the Way Forward (via VTC)"
Speaker: Dr Piyawut Srichaikul Assistant Executive Director (National Electronics & Computer Technology Center, Thailand)

Abstract
Thai National Grid Project has completed its first-3-year plan in late 2008 with great success.  While the continuing phase of the Thai Grid project has not yet officially started, this is an update of the current situation, recent changes, and the direction that Thai Grid will continue well into the future.

Biodata
Piyawut Srichaikul is a 43 years old Bangkok native.  He received B.Sc. in Physics from Chulalongkorn University in 1986.  He earned his Ph.D. in solid state physics from Auburn University, Alabama, USA in 1995.  He then joined National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) as a researcher in High Performance Computing Center.  His past experience involved management of NECTEC’s HPC services, Computational Science and Engineering, Data Warehouse, Cluster and Grid Computing.  In 2006, he was responsible for NSTDA’s research funding program called ECTI technology program, and later during 2007-2009, for Knowledge Engineering Technology (KET) program.  Currently he is appointed an assistant executive director of NECTEC, supervising its platform technology program management.