WORKSHOP: Global Grid Forum Travel Funding: October 8-10, 2001, Rome, Italy

Northwestern University, Evanston IL

Investigators

Abstract

Grid Forum is a grass-roots community organization that began as a BOF session at SC98 in November 1998. Grid Forum has held five highly successful workshops in the US since that time and has formed ten focused working groups, each developing best practices and standards within a particular set of technical areas. Over 500 individuals participate in Grid Forum electronic newsgroups and typical workshop attendance is 150-190 people. Grid Forum has served as the primary gathering point and collaboration vehicle for major initiatives including the NSF Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (PACI) program, NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG) program, the DoD modernization program, DOE grid-based programs, and others. Two of the primary advantages to the existence of such a collaboration vehicle are that it allows these programs to leverage one another and it assures that the various agency-specific grid systems are able to interoperate. During the past year, Grid Forum has joined with similar efforts in Europe and Asia-Pacific, increasing the opportunity to leverage to major grid projects outside of the US. Beyond the advantages of leverage and ensuring interoperability, a single global standards activity ensures that grid technologies do not fragment at continental boundaries. Grid Forum will hold its sixth major workshop, "Global Grid Forum 1" in Amsterdam in March 2001. This meeting will be held in conjunction with the kick-off meeting for the European Data Grid project that is managed by CERN. This project supports travel by approximately 30 US participants, including students and researchers from Minority Serving Institutions, to that meeting. The participants will be recruited from the ranks of existing Grid Forum leaders.