VISUALIZATION

The EGI Council elected its chair on September 24, during the EGEE’09 conference in Barcelona, Spain. Per Öster, representative of the Finnish National Grid Initiative (NGI), was chosen by the European Grid Initiative (EGI) Council members to lead the project’s governing body.

This election constitutes another important step towards the implementation of the EGI, which aims to establish a sustainable grid service for the European scientific communities. This will be achieved through the creation of a long-term, pan-European grid infrastructure. 

A new legal entity (EGI.eu) is currently being established in Amsterdam, and will act as the coordinating body for EGI. Its main role will be to facilitate the interaction and collaboration between the national grid infrastructures of the different participating countries. Together EGI.eu and the NGIs will operate and further develop the pan-European grid infrastructure, in order to guarantee its long-term availability for performing research and innovative work.

The EGI Council, which is made up of NGIs as well as other members such as European institutions represented in the EIROforum will govern the direction of the EGI collaboration on a long term basis, and is therefore one of the key bodies in the EGI.

Per Öster has been working since 2007 as Director of Application Services at CSC, the Finnish IT Center for Science. He has been also actively involved in the EGI Design Study (EGI_DS), in which he has been responsible for the EGI promotion and links with other initiatives. In his statement to the Council members, Öster emphasised the importance of creating a working atmosphere based on trust and transparency, and setting up good working principles, in order that the Council can carry out its mission efficiently, and meet the future challenges.

“In the next few months, important tasks await the EGI Council, including ensuring the success of the EGI proposal to the European Commission and establishing the EGI.eu organization”, Öster said.

“EGI is a fantastic opportunity not only for scientific collaboration but also to make the latest and most advanced computing resources, applications, tools, and data available to all European researchers. It is a great honour to me to be able to contribute to it as chair of the EGI Council.”

More information: www.eu-egi.eu