INDUSTRY

Representatives from GridPP, EGEE and the National Grid Service met members of the business community recently to discuss how the Grid might provide solutions to some of the problems facing industry. The meeting was held at St Johns Innovation Centre in Cambridge, and Tony Doyle, the GridPP project leader, presented GridPP's work and our plans for industrial liaison. Organised by PPARC's KITE Club (Knowledge Innovation Technology Enterprise), the meeting brought scientists from grid projects and people from industry together for an open discussion of the opportunities for technology transfer. Through presentations from researchers, PPARC and small businesses, the attendees were able to better understand which business applications could benefit from using grid technology. The meeting heard from companies working on genomic products and digital image retrieval about how the Grid might help their work. Bob Jones spoke about the role of EGEE's industry forum and its experience interacting with business. As well as Tony Doyle, GridPP attendees included Steve Lloyd, Robin Middleton, and Neasan O'Neill. PPARC provides a number of funding opportunities for joint working with industry, and since the meeting at least two companies present have already submitted project proposals. Alexander Efimov from the KITE Club thought the meeting was a great success, "Our event highlighted where grid computing can create new industrial solutions and how organizations can benefit from sophisticated computing resources of grid. The meeting showed that smaller Enterprises could use grid computing to achieve their business objectives." Tony Doyle agreed, saying, "It was enlightening to see how many companies are out there who could benefit from the work we've been doing for particle physics. GridPP is keen to take forward partnerships with industry, and we'll be keeping in touch with some of the businesses we met." EGEE has been interested in this type of activity for a while now, as Bob Jones, EGEE's technical director, explains "Some companies are already working with EGEE, either as users or providing sites connected to the infrastructure. Technology transfer is a major goal for us as an EU-funded project and we are increasing our efforts in liaising with Industry for the second phase, EGEE-II." The companies involved were diverse, including Ash Biotech Consulting, Cambridge Ontology, Geneservice, Judge Business School, Linguamatics Ltd, Opar Ltd, Tyan UK, Workstations UK Ltd and Total E&P. Any members of GridPP who have project ideas for working with industry are encouraged to contact Sarah Pearce (s.pearce@qmul.ac.uk), to discuss taking them forward. For further information regarding the outcomes of this meeting, or to find out more about the work the KITE club are doing with PPARC-funded grid projects please contact Alex Efimov at alex.efimov@qi3.co.uk