[THEGrid] Extension and renewal of Texas High Energy Grid project

[Alan Sill]

Dear colleagues,

In 2004, as you recall, we formed the Texas High Energy Grid as a  
project of the HiPCAT organization (High Performance Computing Across  
Texas) with the intent of sharing access to computation, promoting  
work and encouraging collaborative efforts in the fields of particle  
and nuclear physics, astrophysics and astronomy, cosmic ray physics  
and medical physics within the state.  In this context, we held a  
series of workshops in at UT Arlington, the University of Houston, and  
Texas A&M University, launched an e-mail list, and conducted  
demonstrations of THEGrid capabilities at the 2004 and 2006  
SuperComputing conferences.

The initial formative work for the Texas High Energy Grid is  
summarized online at the link:

http://hipcat.net/Projects/THEGrid

The current executive committee members for THEGrid are:

Alan Sill, Project director and EC chair
Lawrence Pinsky, Chair of the Department of Physics at University of  
Houston
Jaehoon Yu, leader of the ATLAS Tier-3 effort at UT Arlington

The e-mail list for the project is available for subscription at

http://highenergy.phys.ttu.edu/mailman/listinfo/thegrid

The work that we did was formative in the sense that it enabled Texas- 
based high energy computing at different institutions to blossom, and  
during this process and time period, the pursuit of several related  
projects at the participating institutions took hold and reached a  
successful sustained state of operation.  Most notably among the  
efforts at the various individual institutions, UT Arlington pursued  
work with DOSAR, THEGrid, and Open Science Grid that enables it now to  
operate a Tier-2 system for ATLAS; the UH effort achieved maturity as  
the lead site for ALICE and NASA-funded programs, including medical  
and cosmic ray modeling support with FLUKA, and TTU pursued some  
pioneering work on deployment and support of Tier-3 systems for the  
CMS experiment that has been widely adopted and emulated elsewhere. We  
have also had extensive discussions, primarily with our Texas A&M  
theory colleagues, regarding possible use of TTU resources to support  
high energy theory community calculations and needs.

Beyond the above, the related TIGRE project organized by HiPCAT also  
pursued contact to demonstrate use of grid computing for modeling with  
the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and had further extensive  
contact with the Joe Arrington Cancer Center and Southwest Cancer  
Center in Lubbock on medical physics modeling, and several talks on  
these topics were given at HiPCAT, TIGRE and FLUKA tutorials and  
related meetings.  Other work has gone on within the above areas, and  
I do not mean to fault it by not listing it here, but I would like to  
keep this e-mail reasonably short.

I have carried on and/or followed many discussions among the  
participants listed above.  The purpose of this e-mail is to encourage  
further development of the Texas High Energy Grid as a real entity for  
support of the above areas, and to invite further discussion on these  
topics among all members of the associated communities, topical  
branches and fields of endeavor.  At minimum, I am open to and would  
like to encourage discussion if your fields are in the following areas:

	- High Energy Phenomenology and Theory
	- Particle Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Physics
	- Optical Astronomy and Astrophysics
	- Medical Physics for Radiation Treatment, and Radiation Modeling

These areas, among all of the others, appear prime to be able to make  
substantial progress on support of access to shared computational  
models and data storage, and collaborative computational code  
development.

As current and active project leader for the Texas High Energy Grid,  
on behalf of the project I would like to invite all members of the  
above fields to participate in these discussions with the hope that  
this will lead to new and exciting work in the future.  Speaking for  
my own institution with respect to work in these areas, I can say that  
we are definitely interested in establishing, promoting and extending  
our support of research in all of the above areas and would be  
delighted to talk with any individual researcher or participant in any  
of these areas.  If there is anything we can do to make the Texas High  
Energy Grid more useful or to use it as a tool to promote student,  
faculty or industrial productivity or interest in the above topics,  
please subscribe to the e-mail list and/or let one of us know directly.

Thanks very much for your attention and please do feel free to contact  
me or any of the other members listed above if you have any questions.

Alan Sill, Ph.D
Senior Scientist, High Performance Computing Center
Adjunct Professor of Physics
TTU

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:  Alan Sill, Texas Tech University  Office: Admin 233, MS 4-1167  :
:  e-mail: Alan.Sill at ttu.edu   ph. 806-742-4350  fax 806-742-4358  :
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