NeSC Announcements

The Shintau Project (Shib-Grid Integrated Authorization). User Needs Gathering

The UK JISC and US Internet2 would like to find out user needs and requirements for the use of attributes, issued by multiple authorities, in federated authorisation. This is already a significant problem, for example, when Shibboleth is used to authenticate to Grid applications.
The ultimate intention of the Shintau project is to develop open source software that satisfies the user requirements, and that can be easily integrated into Globus Toolkit, OMII-UK, Shibboleth and other VO facilitating products.

It would greatly help us if you could answer the user requirements questionnaire by 23 April and email it to d.w.chadwick@kent.ac.uk. The questionnaire is available from

http://sec.cs.kent.ac.uk/shintau/

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Funded places available for e-Science MSc at Edinburgh

Funded places are still available for admission to the e-Science MSc/Diploma at the University of Edinburgh in 2007/08. This unique degree is taught by staff from the University's Schools of Physics and Informatics, as well as the National e-Science Centre, and provides students with coverage of the principles underpinning e-Science and Grid computing, as well as practical experience of many of the main technologies used within academic e-Science research and analogous parts of the commercial IT sector.

The degree programme centres on a core of eight mandatory courses, which students supplement with four options, taken from a pool of over 100 courses offered from the MPhys programmes in Physics, the Informatics MSc and the MSc in Geographical Information Science run by the School of GeoSciences. MSc students complete their year-long studies with a three-month individual research project, while a Diploma may be awarded on the basis of the two semesters of taught courses alone. Both degrees may be taken on a part-time basis, over the course of two or three academic years, by those wishing to develop expertise in e-Science and Grid technologies while remaining in work.

The mandatory courses taken by all students give them a solid grounding in basic technologies - Java programming, XML, databases, web and Grid services - and present them with an overview of e-Science, through seminars from leading researchers, and an opportunity to develop transferable skills, as well as developing hands-on experience of using e-Science and Grid middleware. The large number of options on offer enables students to tailor an individual curriculum suited to their particular interests and future career plans, while the students can choose the topic of their individual research project from a wide range offered by supervisors in several Schools in the University, as well as researchers from its Associated Institutions, such as the MRC Human Genetics Unit. Graduates from the first year of the MSc went on to research posts in the University, software development/IT analyst jobs in the commercial sector, and on to further studies.

The degree programme receives studentship support from EPSRC and (subject to confirmation for 2007/08) from the Student Awards Agency for Scotland.
Funded places are still available for entry in September 2007, and applications are encouraged from students with, or expecting, a good honours degree in science or computer science, and with a proven competence in computer programming. Further information is available from the MSc website (http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/postgraduate/degrees/msc_escience.html ), while informal enquiries may be made to the Programme Director, Dr Bob Mann, by email (rgm@roe.ac.uk).