Information Technology seminars
MURPA Seminar 3/2009: On Basics of Using Workflows for Scientific Exploration and the Kepler System
- Date and time:
- 26/03/2009, 10:00
- Location:
- Building: 26, Room: 135, Clayton Campus (via HD Interactive Video)
- Presenters:
- Ilkay Altintas, Director Scientific Workflow Automation Technologies Lab, San Diego Supercomputing Centre
- Abstract:
- Why do we need to know about scientific workflows? Science is changing. As technology changes and data streams accelerate, we need to accommodate to the new pace of scientific exploration. At each step along the scientific investigation process, technology can help us automate some elements. Workflows help scientists to organize and automate both sequential and parallel elements of data acquisition, access, management, sharing, and analysis processes.
A scientific workflow is the process of combining data and processes into a configurable, structured set of steps that implement semi-automated computational solutions of a scientific problem. Kepler is a cross-project collaboration, whose purpose is to develop a domain-independent scientific workflow system. It provides a workflow environment in which scientists design and execute scientific workflows by specifying the desired sequence of computational actions and the appropriate data flow, including required data transformations, between these steps. Currently deployed workflows range from local analytical pipelines to distributed, high–performance and high-throughput applications, which can be both data- and compute-intensive.
This seminar will introduce useful tools for managing scientific workflows involving multiple types of investigatory tasks, from data acquisition to simulations. Kepler workflow system will be introduced as we highlight the use of some of the current features of Kepler in several scientific applications, as well as upcoming extensions and improvements geared towards making scientific process more efficient.
- Speaker biographies:
- Ilkay Altintas is the Director for the Scientific Workflow Automation Technologies Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, UCSD where she also is the Deputy Coordinator for Research. She currently works on different aspects of scientific workflows in collaboration with the DOE Scientific Data Management Center and various cross-disciplinary NSF projects. She is a co-initiator of and an active contributor to the open-source Kepler Scientific Workflow System, and the co-author of publications related to scientific workflows, conceptual data querying, and software modeling. Ilkay Altintas holds BS and MS degrees in Computer Engineering, both from Middle East Technical University in Turkey, and is an external PhD student of Computational Science at University of Amsterdam, working with Prof. P.M.A. Sloot.
Her current projects include the Scientific Data Management Center, Scientific Process Automation, KEPLER Collaboration, Realtime Environment for Analytical Processing (REAP) , Kepler/CORE and CAMERA, Moore Foundation (Community Cyberinfrastructure for Advanced Marine Microbial Ecology Research and Analysis)
- For more information, visit:
-
http://users.sdsc.edu/~altintas/
- Enquiries:
- Rob Gray
