JISC

The UK e-Science programme is undergoing a transition which is reflected in the theme of next week's All Hands conference in Nottingham - achievements, challenges and new opportunities. Many early projects have completed and their results are now being consolidated and moving into new areas. Presentations at the conference will range from completed activities to the challenges for new areas; from blue-skies research to industrial take-up of prototype technologies.

Highlights include the move of e-Science into the arts and humanities, the medical applications of e-Science (including how e-Science techniques can enable the sharing of medical data while preserving patient confidentiality and so contribute to improved treatment and research), and building an e-infrastructure. Special sessions on the last theme will highlight how JISC is taking forward the development of the infrastructure necessary for e-Science, building on earlier work by the e-Science Core programme.

The conference is a forum for all e-Science researchers, developers and users, no matter what their discipline. Sessions will address key grid middleware issues, as well as scientific applications, including how to make e-Science usable, integrating data on the grid, virtual research environments, text and data mining, security, visualisation on the grid, and ontologies and the semantic web. e-Science results and achievements will be demonstrated at a major exhibition throughout the week.

Keynote speakers include: Malcolm Atkinson, UK e-Science Envoy; Robert Gurney, Director of the Environmental Systems Science Centre; and David de Roure, Head of Grid and Pervasive Computing in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, and member of the JISC Support of Research committee, who will be speaking on 'e-Research the JISC way'.

The conference is organised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on behalf of the e-Science Core programme and co-sponsored by JISC.

To attend or for further information please go to All Hands or contact: Judy Redfearn judy.redfearn@epsrc.ac.uk