The Challenge of e-Science

John Taylor, the Director General of the Research Councils, has laid down a vision for e-Science in which world-wide collaborations of scientists will routinely be able to access all types of global resources - computers, data archives and remote facilities - as easily as they now access the Web. The software and hardware infrastructure to fulfil this vision is considerable: the term `Grid' will be used as a shorthand for the middleware that will be required to support e-Scientists of the future.

The talk will give some examples of novel e-Science experiments and review the present situation of Grid middleware. The recent decision to move the Grid middleware base to a Web Services framework will be discussed along with the important Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) standard. After highlighting some of the considerable Computer Science research challenges to realize this Grid e-Science infrastructure, the talk will conclude with some remarks about the imminent commercialisation of the Grid.