JISC

Remit The JISC Committee for the Support of Research is responsible for ensuring that JISC provides appropriate infrastructure and services to support the needs of researchers, particularly in the context of the UK Research Grid and the e-Science initiative.

Membership

The JCSR comprises representatives from each of the UK Research Councils: the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CLRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB).

In addition, the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Library are represented on the Committee. The JCSR has established strong ties throughout the JISC family of Committees and Services.

JISC and JCSR

The JISC Committee for the Support of Research (JCSR) has existed since March 2002.

Samples from the JCSR agenda

Authentication, Authorisation and Accounting (AAA)

Research thrives in a collaborative environment but providing electronic access to resources to users beyond the computer firewalls of an institution in a secure and manageable manner presents many challenges for the academic community.

Widening access requires robust and effective solutions in user authentication and authorisation, together with appropriate management strategies and tools for the use of online resources.

Eleven projects within the AAA programme have been jointly funded by JCSR with the JISC Committee for Information Environment (JCIE) to enable easy and safe access to online resources, thereby increasing research collaboration opportunities across universities. Details of the projects may be found on the JISC web site: AAA programme 

Digital Curation Centre

Research today produces vast amounts of data and information, and with the availability of new high-throughput experimental devices these amounts are set to increase dramatically in almost all areas of science.

It is essential that valuable information is stored in both a manageable and durable format that will enable access both for specialists and for the wider research community.

The Digital Curation Centre intends to provide a focus for research into data curation issues and to provide training and advice on tools and best practice to enable effective digital curation for each community. This programme has been co-funded by JISC and the eScience Core Programme.

Grid infrastructure testbed

The Grid is a new approach to linking resources. These resources may be people,computers, data resources, scientific instruments and visualisation environments requiring the use of high-bandwidth networks.  The UK e-Science Grid will provide an infrastructure test bed comprising four computer clusters, together with dedicated staff to help new Grid users as they learn how to exploit new forms of collaboration.

The testbed will also provide a safe area where academic institutions can test their authentication systems. In this way, the Grid infrastructure testbed will encourage users to exploit the Grid and will also provide valuable feedback to improve the Grid’s usability and robustness. The JCSR is supporting this programme in collaboration with CLRC.

Semantic Grid and Autonomic Computing

Collaboration within a virtual environment such as the Grid will require support for shared practices and common standards.

The Semantic Grid is an ambitious programme that is attempting to identify and build ontologies, schemas and metadata that may be used and reused to automate searching across a distributed environment.

The programme aims to develop improved,intelligent search tools that will enable wider searching, whilst enhancing the quality of results. Complementary to this activity is the quest to develop a truly ‘autonomic’ computing infrastructure that is capable of selfoptimising, self-protecting and self-healing.  The Semantic Grid and Autonomic Computing initiative is a joint initiative with EPSRC.

Details of funded projects may be found at:  Semantic Grid programme

Intelligent text mining for biological sciences

Researchers in the biological sciences are generating vast amounts of data that are not easily shared amongst the wider research community. The results of data searches are often based around the pre-existing knowledge of the researcher.

Much depends upon the quality of data curation and associated metadata: intelligent text mining promises to enable researchers to excavate richer seams of electronic research material, including drawing up precise and tailored summaries personalised to the researcher.

There is huge potential for the benefits of intelligent text mining to stretch far beyond the biological science and medical research communities. The JCSR is working in conjunction with BBSRC and EPSRC to establish a UK Text Mining Centre.

eSocial Science

Social scientists are experts in fieldwork,but there is less of an established tradition in the exploitation of electronic resources, such as web and advanced database searching.

The eSocial Science approach aims to introduce social scientists to the advantages of using Grid-enabled electronic resources through workshops and training packages.  This initiative is jointly funded with ESRC.

eLearning for Schools demonstrators

Three recently approved projects are setting out to capture the imagination of young students:

• eSTAR for e-learning:  from Liverpool John Moore’s University, will provide access to an entire telescope network, enabling seamless access to a live planetarium and science centre
• eEnvironment Learning Facility for Schools:  by the University of Nottingham will enable school children to exploit scientific resources remotely - collating and sharing data and analysis during classroom lessons
• The Schools Malaria Project:  from the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton, will establish a pilot to actively involve schools with a real scientific project, based on looking for potential malaria drugs
  
  These initiatives are funded by JCSR