C-DAC to host prestigious e-Science 2007 conference

BANGALORE, INDIA: The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the premier R&D arm of the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and IT (MC&IT), Government of India is hosting the Third IEEE International Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing during December 10-13, 2007 at Bangalore.

This conference is one of its kinds, which is being held globally every year and is conducted by the country chosen through a bidding process. The previous conferences in this series were organized in Melbourne, Australia (2005) and Amsterdam, Netherlands (2006).

The e-Science 2007 conference is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee for Scalable Computing (TCSC) and is designed to bring together leading international and interdisciplinary research communities, developers, and users of e-Science applications and enabling IT technologies. The conference is important to the e Science community as it serves as a forum to present the results of the latest research and product/ tool developments, and highlight related activities from around the world.

G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO and Secretary, Department of Space, Govt of India will preside over the inaugural ceremony on December 10, 2007 and M.V. Rajsekharan, Hon'ble Union Minister of State for Planning, Govt of India will grace the valedictory ceremony on December 13, 2007 at e Science 2007.

Dr A.K. Chakravarti, Advisor, DIT, Govt of India, Prof. N. Balakrishnan, Associate Director, IISc, Prof. Geoffery Fox, Indiana University, and Prof. Thomas Fahringer, University of Innstruck will be present as the guests of honor during the inaugural ceremony.

This year, three distinguished keynote speakers representing Europe, and Asia -- Prof. David De Roure of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton in the UK, Prof. Thomas Fahringer from the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and Prof. Xiaoming Li from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Peking University in China will deliver invited talks to the delegates.

The conference program will comprise of keynote talks, peer-reviewed research papers, workshops, tutorials, industry track, poster session and research demo section. Four workshops namely ' OGF (Open Grid Forum) Workshop on eScience Highlights', 'Innovative and Collaborative Problem Solving Environment in Distributed Resources', 'Scientific Workflows and Business Workflow Standards in e-Science', and 'International Grid Interoperability and Interoperation Workshop' will be organized during the four-day event. Industry track will feature technical talks from companies IBM, Intel, Sun, HP, etc.

S. Ramakrishnan, Director General, C-DAC said: "This field is a hot and evolving field and has the potential to fundamentally influence how science and collaboration cutting across nations and disciplines is conducted in future. It will also contribute significantly in evolving the eco-system for next generation grid and Web technologies. It is a prestigious moment for the nation to be hosting such an international event which is held in high esteem by the global e-Science community.

"I am equally proud that C-DAC, with sponsorship from a number of agencies from government and industry is hosting the event. It re-inforces our faith in fostering research in emerging areas with potential for broader benefits that it can garner for the common man.

"C-DAC has implemented the national grid computing initiative – GARUDA, over the last three years with funding from Department of IT and the partnership of premier academic and research institutions and ERNET. We stand at a point of entering a new era of research and solving important problems through the grid. Participation in global efforts will be vital. The e-Science 2007 conference will play a key role in this regard and groom upcoming researchers for new opportunities in these two domains."

Ramakrishnan played a leading role in organizing the conference in India on behalf of the Indian IT and supercomputing community.

The Program Committee has received more than 206 submissions from all over the world, out of which 60 top quality research papers have been selected for presentation at the conference. 21 posters and five "live" research demos selected from submissions from all over the world will also feature at the conference.

It is predicted that the next generation of scientific research and experiments will be carried out by communities of researchers from organizations that span national boundaries. These activities will involve geographically distributed and heterogeneous resources such as computational systems, scientific instruments, databases, sensors, software components, networks, and people. Such large-scale and enhanced scientific endeavors, popularly termed as e-Science, are carried out via collaborations on a global scale.