Who will use grid for what?

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Many different branches of science are expected to use grid technology to make advances in their specilised fields. Below is a list of some science disiplines and other areas that are already using Grid technology in their work:

Computational scientists and engineers

Computer modelling and simulation now play a very important role in development of new systems, machines, buildings and bridges in order to make them as safe, efficient and reliable as possible. As systems increase in complexity, so does the amount of computation required to model them effectively. Engineers and scientists will be able to use the grids computing power to do this.

Experimental scientists

By using the grid, experimental scientists will be able to access remote instrumentation (e.g. electron microscopes), or to large data resources (e.g. mammograms images), on which they can perform their research. Experimental science often relies on modelling of complex chemical structures or biochemical interactions to provide them with new insights into their studies. This type of research often uses visual techniques that require access to large data sets and computational power that will be provided by the grid.

Virtual Collaborators

The grid will provide a new way of researchers and companies to collaborate with each other across the Internet. Large scale projects often need resourse in locations remote from each other. The grid will provide a new forum for data exchange and resource sharing across these boundaries facilitating new discoveries and developments.

Corporations

Over the last couple of decades the move towards globalization has resulted in the formation of worldwide corporations. These comprise of many research and development and manufacturing facilities across the world. All these disparate sites can now be linked seamlessly together through a corporate grid to share information and their computational resources across the whole of the corporation.

Environmental science

Environmental science covers a wide range of disiplines many of which require access to large data sets. Grid based experimentation will enable scientists to access new resources of both data and computational power to conduct highly complex modelling of the large scale dynamics of weather systems for instance, or study the likely impacts of climate change over the next hundred years. Ecology which often uses complex mathematical models to explain natural environments, is another area of environmental science that is likely to benefit from the accessibility to new sources of both data and computing power through grid enabled infrastructure.

Biological Science

Over the last 10 years biology has undergone an important revolution. Studies at the DNA level have resulted in the production of a vast quantity of new biological information about how organisms are built and function. Biologists have sequenced the whole of the human genome and from many other organisms. This vast quantity of data requires complex computational studies to help us understand the meaning behind it all. The field of 'Bioinformatics' is trying to make sense of this data and requires access to both raw data stored in many different databases around the world and the computing power to analyse it. Grid technology is already impacting on this science and will facilitate considerable advances in our understanding of ourselves and other organisms.

Training and Education

Virtual learning environments are used extensively to teach people about complex problems such as flying jet planes, or how to react under stressful conditons before they are exposed to the real situation. Other ways that virtual learning environments can be used include videoconferencing of lectures and tutorials to students who are distance learning over the Internet. The grid will provide easy access to these and other types of learning environment that are far richer experiences than has so far been possible.


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