GridPP3 tranche2 SouthGrid Birmingham Grant
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
The grant is equipment only, and has been agreed related to the previous issued grant /PP/E002765/1
Organisations
Publications
Elmsheuser J
(2011)
Reinforcing user data analysis with Ganga in the LHC era: scalability, monitoring and user-support
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Dzhunov I
(2012)
Key developments of the Ganga task-management framework
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Currie R
(2015)
Recent developments in user-job management with Ganga
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Antoniev I
(2012)
BESIII and SuperB: distributed job management with Ganga
in Journal of Physics: Conference Series
| Description | Birmingham, as a part of the UK GridPP collaboration, provides a component of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid and its share of the distributed computing infrastructure required to exploit the data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN Laboratory. This has made possible many thousands of physics results, as published by the four main LHC experimental collaborations (ATLAS, CMS, LHCb, ALICE), most notably the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. In addition, the project delivers Grid computing resources to some non-LHC groups. |
| Exploitation Route | The GridPP project will continue to provide distributed computing resources throughout the lifetime of the LHC. The existing LHC results form the basis for further research in experimental and theoretical particle physics, as well as for educational purposes to inspire and train the next generation of physicists. |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
| URL | https://www.gridpp.ac.uk/ |
| Description | The results from the LHC, most notably the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, are used for educational and outreach purposes to inspire and train the next generation of physicists. Software developed for the Grid distributed computing infrastructure can be used in many other areas of research. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
| Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education |
| Title | Ganga |
| Description | Provides a user interface for job management across both local and grid/remote computing resources |
| Type Of Technology | Grid Application |
| Year Produced | 2016 |
| Impact | Dr Mark Slater and Dr Matthew Williams are active developers of the Ganga project, which provides a user interface for job management across both local and grid/remote resources. This is a software tool that has and is being used outside of particle physics, in Astrophysics, Medical physics and the commercial sector, to help users manage their computing tasks. |
| URL | https://ganga.web.cern.ch/ganga/ |
| Description | Computing conference talk (Berlin, Germany) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Conference talk about computing Grid application software "Ganga: an interface to the LHC computing grid", presented by Dr Matthew Williams, to a general audience of IT professionals, which stimulated increased interest in this area of research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | https://ep2014.europython.eu/en/schedule/sessions/54/ |
| Description | Computing conference talk (Coventry) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Conference talk on Grid computing application software: "Ganga: a Python interface for particle physics analysis", presented by Dr Matthew Williams, to a general audience of IT professionals, which stimulated further interest in this area of research. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| URL | http://www.pyconuk.org/ |
| Description | General support for non-LHC users of Grid computing |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Dr Mark Slater provided general support for several small users and collaborations to allow them to leverage the grid resources, these include: PravDa (Beam therapy), LSST (Astrophysics), SNO+ and T2K (both non-LHC Particle Physics). |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016 |
| Description | Python training day for Computational Biology department (Birmingham) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
| Results and Impact | Provided a day's training on Python for Computational Biology department in Birmingham. This has resulted in greatly improved use of Python in the department. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
| Description | Talk at Particle Physics Masterclass to school pupils |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | Yes |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Schools |
| Results and Impact | About 100 school sixth formers attended Particle Physics Masterclass, followed by a question and answer session. Schools often ask for staff visits |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2008,2009,2010 |
| Description | Talk at workshop on "Big Data" (Birmingham) |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Local |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Dr Mark Slater presented and participated at a "Big Data" workshop that brought together professional academic and research staff from many disciplines from across the University of Birmingham. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014 |
| Description | Workshops on Grid and Ganga usage |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Dr Mark Slater organised two workshops on Grid and Ganga software usage to the wider HEP and scientific community in Jan 2016, Jan 2014 and Oct 2014. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2016 |
| URL | https://github.com/ganga-devs/ganga/wiki/Full-Tutorial |