NRP: National eScience Centre Research Platform

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The core funding from the e-Science Core Programme for the National e-Science Centre (NeSC) has enabled us to be leaders in the development of e-Science methods and technology to facilitate research in all disciplines. Our own research has a particular focus / improving techniques for exploiting the ever-growing wealth of distributed scientific data and knowledge. This data may be obtained through experiment, simulation, specialised sensors and human interaction. Exploitation involves every step from obtaining and indexing data to using it to test hypotheses or discover patterns in order to create knowledge. Our work enables researchers in a wide variety of disciplines to be more productive as they exploit data that is growing in scale and complexity.This research is complemented by engaging in intensive collaboration with application domains within our universities, in Scotland, in the UK and internationally to drive forward our understanding, methods, algorithms, architectures and technologies. We then integrate the results and provide services to a wider community through channels such as NeSC workshops, eSI, OMII-UK, EGEE, NextGRID, OGF, Grid Computing Now! and joint research publications. The case for support includes several illustrations of existing collaborations which we will continue to develop further.By providing core support and flexibility, this platform grant will enable us to continue and extend our strategic programme and collaborative relationships. We will continue to undertake research into each contributing domain through joint grants that address explicitly identified technical challenges. Through past experience we recognise that this is often facilitated through initial engagement and prototyping work with those domains. The resources provided by this platform grant will support these preparatory explorations. The combined knowledge and engagement of the named staff and investigators on the platform team will enable us to exploit synergies between our collaborative projects, which would not otherwise be feasible. The continuity provided by the platform grant will enable us to commit to five year's collaboration with our science partners. The case for support provides many illustrations of collaborative research projects currently in development, based on existing work and confirmed by letters of support. Our research strategy extends beyond these collaborations to interdisciplinary and fundamental research that will benefit many disciplines at a number of geographic scales: within the two universities, across Scotland, throughout the UK and internationally.The research will be steered by the investigators with feedback and advice from regular meetings of an applications forum. The NeSC's support for application communities will draw on the rich research environment in the universities and in Scotland. Our support will be delivered through easy-to-use high-level tools operating over an ecosystem of dependable and flexible resources. These resources may be provided locally, by research organisations and in the internet cloud .An incremental, pragmatic and empirical approach is necessary to ensure that we meet researchers' real needs. We will spot opportunities to exploit data or computation for specific goals then integrate the successes to provide an increasingly productive research environment for multiple application domains. The NeSC research programme must deliver what researchers require and adroitly adapt the supporting systems to obtain synergy, sharing, dependability and precision. Sustained engagement significantly increases the power of this approach through refinement and cross-fertilisation between the different applications.