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e-Science

Aims and objectives

The NERC research agenda

  • Introduction
  • Cross-council programme structure and implementation
  • Framework
  • Structure

Introduction

The UK e-Science Programme and the Core Programme have a total budget of over £250m. NERC received £7m over three years from the Science Budget 2001- 2004, and a further £8m from SR 2002, to engage in a cross-council e-Science initiative. The expectations of the cross-council programme and the proposed emphasis for NERC are summarised in the Science Budget allocations document (Part 2, Science Budget 2001-02 to 2003-04, Allocations to Funded Bodies pp 21-22).

Cross-council programme structure and implementation

Management

The Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), leads on behalf of all research councils and manages the core programme, which has a budget of £15m. It aims to "work across all of the different council activities, developing and brokering generic technology solutions and generic middleware". Professor Tony Hey, Dean of Engineering, Southampton and EPSRC's Director of e-Science, initially oversaw the programme. The EPSRC envoy, Professor Malcolm Atkinson has recently been appointed to this role. For more information please see the EPSRC e-Science core programme's website.

Individual research council allocations

Research councils chose specific elements to ensure that the e-Science technologies are captured by the different science areas and, in turn, that the different science areas each contribute to technology development

e-Science Steering Committee

This has been established under the chairmanship of Professor David Wallace, Vice-Chancellor of Loughborough University. All Councils report to this committee, which reports back to OSI.

In addition, DTI provided further funds to EPSRC for e-Science to 'assist the commercialisation of the core generic technologies and the transfer of emerging technologies to companies'.

Framework

A NERC Working Group met on 14 March 2001 to discuss the magnitude and scope of NERC interests in e-Science. As intended, they sketched out a framework within which the NERC programme should be cast and highlighted long-term objectives, recognising that the over-arching objective is that the e-Science funding should be used to underpin high quality science and be consistent with NERC's core mission.

The following framework was agreed.

  • NERC interprets the government's definition of e-Science widely.

  • Whenever and wherever appropriate, the NERC programme should seek collaboration with other Research Councils, government agencies (eg Met Office and Environment Agency) and industry/end users.

  • There is no expectation that NERC e-Science funding will be used to provide high performance computing. EPSRC received a separate funding line of £9m towards procuring high performance computing for the whole e-Science programme.

  • Similarly, there is no expectation that NERC e-Science funding will provide research infrastructure to ensure GRID connectivity. Funding lines for this activity will be through the Science Research Investment Fund for HEIs and the research centre infrastructure allocation for NERC research centres.

  • As well as improving understanding and predictive capability, the NERC e-Science programme must focus on producing deliverables as the basis for solving problems.

  • It is vital that the NERC programme has a clear set of deliverables by year 3, and a subset that must be delivered in year 3 at least and preferably by year 2.

  • e-Science funding opportunities for two areas of potential interest to the NERC community (bioinformatics and solar terrestrial physics) exist within other NERC programmes or other research council programmes. The NERC Environmental Genomics programme has allocated up to £1m to support bioinformatics, and the PPARC* e-Science programme incorporates a proposal for e-Science modelling for solar terrestrial physics.

  • The above framework points to the need for a programme focused on a few large projects, rather than a fully inclusive but more diffuse activity.

* PPARC is now merged with CCLRC to form the Science & Technology Facilities Council.

Structure

NERC is developing coupled Earth system models that improve both our understanding of complex interactions within and between the biosphere, the geosphere, the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, and our ability to confidently predict and resolve environmental problems. e-Science is an important and timely initiative on the road to realising this objective, as it can help address issues that are impeding progress, including:

  • scaling (from the molecular to the global)
  • improving access to data and models
  • linking data to models
  • model to model coupling

About the programme

 

External links