Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences and Grid Computing

Modern cyberinfrastructure (CI) creates a “distributed computer” with resources dispersed in diverse geographic and administrative domains and the network providing the “backplane” for this computer. This session will present major players in research and education CI and will offer an overview of the CI Days program under way to assist campuses in planning and implementing CI.

The CI Days program is being developed in coordination with EDUCAUSE, Internet2, National LambdaRail (NLR), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy (DOE). The NSF’s TeraGrid and the DOE’s Open Science Grid build on advanced networking to provide leading-edge collaborative computing infrastructure, Internet2 and NLR provide the enhanced network backplane infrastructure, and the NSF’s International Research Network Connections program offers international extensions. Internet2 also develops middleware tools to enable end users to reliably access CI resources, and EDUCAUSE addresses policy and funding issues involved with implementing and operating CI.

Since January of 2007, the TeraGrid has been partnering with select campuses to pilot the use of Internet2's Shibboleth and with NCSA and the University of Chicago's GridShb to access grid-enabled resources. This session will offer insight into the lessons learned and next steps to be taken toward campus and cyberinfrastructure integration.