National Grid Initiatives (NGIs) and Specialized Support Centers (SSCs)

According to the EGEE timetable, EGEE will end in April 30, 2010. The coming sustainable grid infrastructure, EGI (European Grid Initiative), will be based on National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), expected to be established in each participating country. The EGI will be composed of the NGIs and a central, mostly coordinating part, called EGI.eu. Since all grid resources and most of the support will be under control of the NGIs, they will play an important role and will need permanent funding.

In EGI Specialized Support Centers (SSCs) shall facilitate application support, which will be generally sustained by the NGIs. An SSC may be formed for a particular scientific area (high energy physics, life sciences, ...) or for specific user needs, e.g. training. There will be no obligation for an NGI to be part of any SSC.

Overview Specialized Support Centers (SSCs)

Germany

In Germany D-Grid is the platform for national grid projects. Unfortunately D-Grid is formally a company and cannot act as NGI in the sense of EGI. Instead a new, recently founded organization, the Gauß-Allianz, has been entrusted with this function. The Gauß-Allianz has signed the Memorandum of Understanding end of June 2009.

Executive Board of the Gauß-Allianz:

Wolfgang E. Nagel (TU Dresden), Chair person
Heinz-Gerd Hegering (LMU München)
Christian Bischof (RWTH Aachen)

Speaker of the German NGI is Dieter Kranzlmüller (LMU/LRZ). The work for the German NGI will be done by an association consisting of

Steinbuch Centre for Computing, Karlsruhe
Leibniz Rechenzentrum, Garching
Forschungszentrum Jülich
DESY

In the EGI Policy Board Germany is represented by Klaus Ullmann (Deutsches Forschungsnetz).

Switzerland

In Switzerland the Swiss National Grid Association, SwiNG, is the platform for national grid projects and will act as Swiss NGI in the future. At present SwiNG cannot be funded, since the Swiss funding system is based on four years cycles and we are now in the middle of a cycle. Only at the beginning of a cycle the funding of a new project can be decided. Therefore the rights and duties of representing the Swiss NGI have been delegated to SWITCH for about two years. 2012 SwiNG will overtake.

Recently SWITCH has signed the Memorandum of Understanding. The work will be done together by SWITCH, the ETH Zürich and the University of Zürich.

Executive Board of SwiNG:

Dean Flanders (FMI), SwiNG president
Nabil Abdennadher (HES-SO, Ecole d'Ingèneurs Geneva)
Sigve Haug (University of Bern), Chair person of the Executive Board
Pierre Kuonen (HES-SO, Ecole d'Ingènieurs Fribourg)
Heinz Stockinger (Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics)
Christoph Witzig (SWITCH)

In the EGI Policy Board Switzerland is represented by Fiorenzo Scaroni (SWITCH).

Switzerland is interested in SSCs for the following scientific areas.

Switzerland wants to be active in these SSCs together with other countries/institutions, not on one's own.

EGEE related activities

Applications Registry

The EGEE Applications Registry is the central point for gathering and providing information about the scientific applications deployed in EGEE, exploiting the project's international Grid infrastructure. Information is given about scientific applications ported to the Grid, i.e. software not only copied but adapted to or developed for EGEE Grid.

The Applications Registry is starting to gain considerable publicity among EGEE members. At the moment only regional coordinators can have access and update the registry. Please contact us to have your application registered.

List of active Virtual Organizations with members from German or Swiss institutions

October 2008, CERN not considered. More detailed information about the VOs is available on the CIC Operations Portal.

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astro-Particle Physics

Life Sciences

High-Energy Physics

Infrastructure

Other Subjects