Programme Committee for escience Infrastructure, Theory and Applications (evita)

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1 Programme Committee for escience Infrastructure, Theory and Applications (evita) November 24 th 12:00-16:00 and November 25 th 09:00-15:00 Stensberggaten 25 and 26, Oslo From the Programme Committee: Professor Helge Holden (chair), NTNU Project Manager Geir Evensen, StatoilHydro Senior Scientist Galen Gisler, University of Oslo Professor Pinar Heggernes, University of Bergen (Items 28/09-31/09) Professor Vidar R. Jensen, University of Bergen (only Nov 25 th ) Professor Juni Palmgren, Karolinska Institute From the Administration: Special Adviser Gudmund Høst External: Chief scientist Knut-Andreas Lie, SINTEF (Item 32/09) Professor Gaute Einevoll (Item 37/09) Managing Director Jacko Koster, UNINETT Sigma (Items 24/09-27/09) UNINETT Sigma Board (Items 24/09-27/09) Excused: Professor Ebba Þóra Hvannberg, University of Iceland Tuesday November 24 th 12:00-16:00 evita Town hall meeting, Stensberggaten 25, Oslo Wednesday November 25 th, 9-15 Item evita 28/09 Impressions from town hall meeting The Programme Committee discussed the town hall meeting. They were impressed with many of the presentations and a constructive discussion. The main conclusion from the meeting seemed to be that a rather narrow call should be chosen, since the amount of funding is limited. The idea of creating escience centres was discussed at some length. Joint session with Uninett Sigma Board: Item 29/09-31/09

2 Item evita 29/09 Presentation of agreements regulating the relationship between Sigma and the Research Council The Programme coordinator presented the agreements between Sigma and the Research Council. The Research Council has a long-term collaborative agreement with UNINETT on establishment and development of Sigma. The content of this collaboration is described in project agreements (Notur II and NorGrid) which are renewed annually. The Notur II agreement specifies in detail various deliverables. Important deliverables include progress reports, annual activity plans and annually revised long-term budgets. Item evita 30/09 Presentation of FP7 proposals on EGI and PRACE The Notur project leader Jacko Koster presented Sigma's involvement in two EU calls on einfrastructure that closed November 24 th. Sigma participates in proposals for Partnership for Advanced computing in Europe (PRACE) and European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). The Norwegian participation in PRACE amounts to 85 person months, of which 24 person months need to be funded from national sources. In addition Norway has to pay a participant fee, currently set to annually. Sigma suggests that manpower and participant fee is covered by the Notur II budget. EGI is the proposal for a distributed computing infrastructure for Europe. The annual fee for Norway is Jacko Koster also presented a proposal for a sustainable Nordic einfrastructure proposal. The current budget is annually from each national grid infrastructure, in addition to per country for the WLCG collaboration. Item evita 31/09 Presentation of progress reports for Notur II and NorGrid The progress reports for these two projects have annual deadline October 15 th. The Research Council still has not received these reports. The project leader Jacko Koster gave an oral presentation of the status for these projects. The Programme Committee noted that information on operations for titan (University of Oslo) was missing since March. The Programme Committee noted that automatic monitoring tools for quality of service do not seem to be used systematically in Notur. The evita chairman noted on the repeated delays of the progress reports from Sigma. Due to this breach of contract, previous measures taken by the Research Council have included withholding payments to Sigma. Since this does not seem to have been effective, the Programme Committee recommends the administration to take appropriate measures, including considering the termination of the current contract.

3 12:00-15:00 Separate session of the evita Programme Committee Item evita 32/09 evita winter school and scientific meeting The project leader, Knut-Andreas Lie, SINTEF presented the evita winter school. The winter school was initiated in 2001 during the research programme in Computational mathematics for applications (BeMatA) and continued under the evita programme with a somewhat wider scope, also including a scientific meeting. The programme committee was impressed with the quality and popularity of the winter school. The project leader was thanked for his efforts and stamina during these years, and the Programme Committee acknowledged his essential role in all parts of the arrangements. The Programme Committee discussed possible alternatives for the future and concluded that it is highly desirable to see a continuation of the winter school concept. A call for proposals should be launched in parallel with starting a candidate search for potential project leaders for the winter school. Decision: The Programme committee decided to launch a call for proposals on future winter schools in escience. Item evita 33/09 Norwegian participation in PRACE The Programme Committee discussed Norway s involvement in PRACE during its meeting 3/09, Item 24/09. The PC concluded that participation in PRACE would be of importance to Norwegian researchers, in particular for competence development and for preparing the research community for systems that in the future will be available nationally. The PC also suggested that a decision process should follow a separate track, aligned with a national procedure for participation in ESFRI projects. The Norwegian participation in PRACE amounts to approximately 85 person months, of which 24 person months needs to be funded from national sources. In addition Norway has to pay a participant fee, currently of annually. The Programme Committee discussed possible funding models for PRACE participation. Alternative funding models could be through the NOTUR project or through an application to the Research Council's general competitive call on research infrastructure. Sigma argues that the annual 1 FTE contribution from Norway could be integrated into the NOTUR project. However, this would be a change of scope and would require a revision of the contract with Sigma. Alternatively, an application to the call on research infrastructure may have uncertain outcome. The Programme Committee emphasized that the NOTUR project is funded on a long-term basis from the

4 Research Council s basic funding for high performance computing. Participation in PRACE may prove valuable to Norwegian research groups, but it is not a necessary component of the basic services that a national einfrastructure needs to provide. Thus, the Programme Committee does not see it as appropriate to incorporate PRACE in the NOTUR project without additional funding. Decision: The Programme Committee recommends that PRACE activity is kept separate from the NOTUR budget until distinct additional funding for PRACE can be allocated. Item evita 34/09 Progress reports for research projects Only minor deviations are reported on the research projects. Decision: The Programme Committee approved of the progress reports. Item evita 35/09 Administration budget 2010 The estimated administration costs for 2009 is kr, while the budget for 2009 was kr. The deviation is due to less spending on almost all budget items, in particular on the einfrastructure Scientific Opportunities Panel (esop), which will have its first meeting in December. It is proposed to allocate for administration in The increase is due to more activity, in particular related to a new call for proposals and processing of the proposals. Decision: The administration budget for 2010 was approved. Item evita 36/09 Information issues The budget for evita for 2010 is unchanged. EVITA will receive 16 mill. kr from KD and 7,4 mill. kr from NHD. A call for proposals on research infrastructure is planned for 2010 by the Research Council, including call for proposals on einfrastructure for research. The Programme Committee noted that einfrastructure is a rapidly changing concept due to technological developments. The programme committee recommends that the Research Council s 2010 call for proposals on einfrastructure should harmonize with definitions used in the current EU call on einfrastructure and cover all relevant ICT facilities, resources and related services that are used by the scientific community to conduct top-level research in their respective fields. This will be crucial in order to maximize the impact of Norwegian einfrastructure investments. The new einfrastructure Scientific Opportunities Panel (esop) will have its first meeting on December 14 th.

5 Item evita 37/09 Forslag om endring i prosjekt : eneuro - multilevel neural simulation and modelling (minutes in Norwegian) Prosjektleder Gaute Einevoll, UMB presenterte saken. Som tidligere rapportert til Forskningsrådet ble et delprosjekt i eneuro avbrutt i starten av I den forbindelse ble en tre-årig postdoktorstilling, opprinnelig tilknyttet laboratoriet til Johan Storm på IMB ved Universitetet i Oslo, omdisponert. To av disse tre postdoktorårene er allerede omdisponert innenfor rammen av prosjektet, og postdoktor er ansatt i stilling ved UMB. For det tredje postdoktoråret foreslår prosjektleder i samarbeid med ledelsen på IMB følgende: 1. Det etableres et nytt mindre prosjekt hvor laboratoriet til Storm utvikler "compartmental models" for nerveceller ut fra egen metodikk. Disse modellene vil være selvstendige forskningsprodukter som vil bli gjort allment tilgjengelig for forskersamfunnet ved at de legges ut i offentlig tilgjengelige modelldatabaser som ModelDB ( 2. I prosjektet inngår dekning av ett postdoktorårsverk, utført av én og samme postdoktor. IMB tilføres midler fra eneuro til dekning av dette. Beløpet tilsvarer satsene for NFRs postdoktorer. 3. Prosjektet avsluttes senest innen utgangen av Prosjektet overses internt på IMB, med instituttleder som ansvarshavende. All kontakt mellom IMB og IMT angående prosjektgjennomføringen skal gå via instituttleder. Prosjektleder presenterte forslaget og ba om godkjennelse av programstyret. Programstyret hadde noen spørsmål og diskuterte deretter saken. Programstyret mente forslaget innebærer en betydelig endring fra opprinnelig søknad, og det samarbeidet som er beskrevet der. Programstyret finner at forslaget vil innebære en faglig svekkelse av prosjektet. Vedtak: Søknaden om endring i prosjektet avvises. AOB Next meeting of the Programme Committee will be during the evita science meeting, Geilo, January 27 th 29 th., 2010.

6 Forbruk 2006 Forbruk 2007 Forbruk 2008 Budsjett 2009 Forbruk pr okt Prognose 2009 Budsjett 2009 Budsjett 2010 Programstyret Rådgivende utvalg RFK - einfra Drift av programmet Søknadsbehandling Formidling Programrefusjon Evaluering - einfra Sum