GridPP4+ Birmingham Staff Grant
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Birmingham
Department Name: School of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
This proposal, submitted in response to the 2014 invitation from STFC, aims to provide and operate a computing Grid for the exploitation of LHC data in the UK. The success of the current GridPP Collaboration will be built upon, and the UK's response to production of LHC data in the period April 2015 to March 2016 will be to ensure that there is a sustainable infrastructure providing "Computing in the LHC era".
We propose to operate a Grid as the main mechanism for delivering very large-scale computational resources to the UK particle physics community. This foundation will underpin the success and increase the discovery potential of UK physicists. We will operate a production-quality Grid, delivering robustness, scale and functionality. The proposal is fully integrated with international projects and we must exploit the opportunity to capitalise on the UK leadership already established in several areas. The Particle Physics Grid will increasingly be integrated with national and international initiatives.
The project will be managed across various domains and will deliver the UK's commitment to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) and ensure that worldwide activities directly benefit the UK. By 2015, the UK Grid infrastructure will have expanded in size to 50,000 cores, with more than 30 PetaBytes of storage. This will enable the UK to exploit, in an internationally competitive way, the unique physics potential of the LHC.
We propose to operate a Grid as the main mechanism for delivering very large-scale computational resources to the UK particle physics community. This foundation will underpin the success and increase the discovery potential of UK physicists. We will operate a production-quality Grid, delivering robustness, scale and functionality. The proposal is fully integrated with international projects and we must exploit the opportunity to capitalise on the UK leadership already established in several areas. The Particle Physics Grid will increasingly be integrated with national and international initiatives.
The project will be managed across various domains and will deliver the UK's commitment to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) and ensure that worldwide activities directly benefit the UK. By 2015, the UK Grid infrastructure will have expanded in size to 50,000 cores, with more than 30 PetaBytes of storage. This will enable the UK to exploit, in an internationally competitive way, the unique physics potential of the LHC.
Planned Impact
GridPP's knowledge exchange activities fall into two main areas: firstly, those aimed at other academic disciplines, and secondly, business and industry. GridPP has a strong outreach programme to a public and academic audience, and intends to continue this in GridPP4+. The Dissemination Officer will organise GridPP's presence at conferences and events. This includes booking and manning booths, arranging backdrops, material, posters, screens, and rotas where appropriate. Examples of events that we have attended include The British Science Festival, The Royal Society Summer Exhibition, the British Science Association Science Communication Conference and Meet The Scientist at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. GridPP has developed an extensive website that is central to project communications. The Dissemination Officer will be responsible for producing news items for the website and drafting GridPP press releases. We have had broad coverage from these in the past, including many national newspapers and online publications.
Additional activities will include producing GridPP material, such as leaflets, posters, t-shirts, bags and magic cubes. We have found these very valuable in raising GridPP's and LHC's profile at minimal cost. The Dissemination Officer will also promote outreach training for members of the collaboration, will identify GridPP staff who have specific expertise in this area and will arrange occasional GridPP events, such as the Tier-1 open day.
On KE, our initial work has proved that GridPP's technology can be of use across a range of disciplines and sectors, and we plan to continue this work during GridPP4+. The objectives of this program will be to improve awareness of the technologies developed by GridPP and its partners in academia and industry, and hence facilitate the increase in use of these technologies within new areas.
Additional activities will include producing GridPP material, such as leaflets, posters, t-shirts, bags and magic cubes. We have found these very valuable in raising GridPP's and LHC's profile at minimal cost. The Dissemination Officer will also promote outreach training for members of the collaboration, will identify GridPP staff who have specific expertise in this area and will arrange occasional GridPP events, such as the Tier-1 open day.
On KE, our initial work has proved that GridPP's technology can be of use across a range of disciplines and sectors, and we plan to continue this work during GridPP4+. The objectives of this program will be to improve awareness of the technologies developed by GridPP and its partners in academia and industry, and hence facilitate the increase in use of these technologies within new areas.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Christopher Hawkes (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Currie R
(2015)
Recent developments in user-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 | 2015 |
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 | Active member member of a Special Interest Group on Programming |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Active member member of a Special Interest Group on Programming at the University looking to improve the teaching and support of post-grad and post-doc research software engineers |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016,2017 |
Description | Chair of the Academic Programmers Special Interest Group |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Chair of the Academic Programmers Special Interest Group |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020,2021,2022 |
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 | General support for non-LHC users of Grid computing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | General support for non-LHC users of Grid computing. Providing information, advice and guidance to other researchers, from outside the LHC and particle physics, who want to use GridPP resources and software for their own research work. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2014,2015,2016,2017 |
Description | Instructor at 6-day C++/Software Development tutorial |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Regional |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Instructor at 6-day C++/Software Development tutorial for Researchers open to the whole University |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2019,2020,2021 |
Description | Introduction to Python courses |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Two courses each year at the university's Centre for Computational Biology aimed at Masters level students, intended to promote the use of Python software beyond the normal particle physics user group. Developed into a distance learning course. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2017,2018,2019,2020,2021 |
Description | Invited and attended meeting hosted by Academic Health Sciences Network about improvements to Drug distribution in the NHS |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | National |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Invited and attended meeting hosted by Academic Health Sciences Network about improvements to Drug distribution in the NHS. Promoted use of GridPP services and resources to professional practitioners from outside particle physics. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Keynote speaker at BEAR PGR User conference in Birmingham |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Keynote speaker at BEAR PGR User conference in Birmingham. Promoted GridPP to other users of high-perfomance computing at University of Birmingham. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
Description | Python training day for Computational Biology department (Birmingham) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
Results and Impact | Python training day for Computational Biology department (Birmingham). Specific training for researchers in Computational Biology who want to use GridPP software tools and resources in their own research work. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 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 | Software Carpentry instructor on Python and Git courses |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Course open to whole university, intended to promote the use of Python and Git software beyond the normal particle physics user group. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2018,2019,2020,2021,2022 |
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 | Talk for Special Interest Group on Programming on the LHC and computing |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A talk or presentation |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | Local |
Primary Audience | Postgraduate students |
Results and Impact | Talk for Special Interest Group on Programming on the LHC and computing, to promote GridPP to other researchers using of high-performance computing and IT professionals. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2016 |
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 |