What is e-science?

The new computer room in Building 513, CERN
(Credit: CERN)

The Government has defined e-Science as "science increasingly done through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet, using very large data collections, tera-scale computing resources and high performance visualisation." STFC interprets this definition widely, to include computational and data grid applications, middleware developments and essential hardware procurement.

STFC believes that e-science, in the form of developing resources for data and information management and processing across local, national and global networks, will play a major role in the delivery of its future programme. Forthcoming developments in the scientific programme (such as the LHC experiments and the UKIRT WFCAM) will generate massive quantities of data that must be made available in a seamless way to scientists across the research communities, requiring advanced software tools. PPARC had £26 million for e-science programmes in the 3 years from 1 April 2001.

It is expected that most of STFC e-science funding will be in support of people developing advanced informatics techniques. The STFC communities are strongly encouraged to build collaborations with computer scientists and other researchers in order to meet these challenges in e-science.