ESnet, Internet2 Host Workshop For Life Sciences

Technology Leaders To Discuss Challenges and Best Practices To Support Data-Intensive Science


The Department of Energy’s ESnet and Internet2 will host the first Focused Technical Workshop titled, “Network Issues for Life Sciences Research,” at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, July 17 to 18.


The meeting brings network engineers, network researchers together with the life science research community to discuss network and computing challenges and requirements with the purpose of developing next steps for supporting this data-intensive science community. The full agenda is available by clicking here.


The workshop will include keynotes from Jay Keasling, Berkeley Lab’s associate laboratory director for Biosciences and chief executive officer of the Joint BioEnergy Institute; George Komatsoulis, chief information officer of the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute; and Adam Arkin, computational biologist and director of Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division, and principal investigator for the Kbase project.


The workshop's format is designed to encourage lively, interactive discussions by the invited speakers and panelists. 


Four topics will be explored in depth within the context of Life Sciences:

  1. Workflow Engines, Portals, Storage, and Gateways: David Skinner (NERSC/Science Gateways), Ewa Deelman (USC/ISI Pegasus), Yushu Yao (LBNL/NERSC), and James Taylor (Emory University/PI for Galaxy Project)
  2. Data Movement Architecture and Tools: Steve Tuecke (Globus Online), Martin Swany (Indiana University), Michelle Munson (Aspera), Jason Zurawski (ESnet), and Dan Maltbie (Annai Systems)
  3. Public and Private Cloud Architectures: Narayan Desai (ANL), Bob Grossman (University of Chicago/BioNimbus), and Sanjay Joshi (EMC)
  4. Network Infrastructure Issues and Architectures: Don Preuss (NIH/NCBI), Chris Dagdigian (BioTeam), Nicole Gregoire (SURFnet), KC Wang (Clemson University), and Bill Barnett (Indiana University/Director of NCGAS)