EMI Project Successfully Completed

The European Middleware Initiative (EMI) - a 36-month EU project - was successfully completed in June 2013 with the best possible review grade of 'excellent'. In this project, JSC collaborated with 25 other partners in 18 countries including, among others, CERN, CINECA, University of Warsaw, DESY, University of Dresden, INFN, University of Lund, University of Copenhagen, and the UK Science & Technology Facilities Council.

As a flagship EU Grid computing project for middleware development, harmonization, and maintenance, it contributed to the seamless access of computing resources ranging from small PC clusters up to the largest supercomputers in infrastructures such as EGI or PRACE in Europe as well as OSG and XSEDE in the USA.

The EMI services for computing, security, information management, and data management have been fundamental for the operation of Grid computing within Europe for scientific communities such as the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG). The success of Grid computing was highlighted by Prof. Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director-General of CERN, in the context of the discovery of the Higgs boson: "It has only been possible because of the extraordinary performance of the accelerators, including the infrastructure, the experiments, and the Grid computing."

JSC staff members made significant contributions with their technical expertise in EMI, including essential parts of the UNICORE technology in collaboration with other UNICORE partners. JSC also had a number of key roles such as strategic project leadership including standardization, as well as heading the support activities.
More information: http://www.eu-emi.eu/;
Youtube video on EMI and the Higgs boson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11x1mMHRuKU.

(Contact: Prof. Dr. Morris Riedel, m.riedel@fz-juelich.de)

from JSC News No. 215, 11 September 2013