Scientists' dream of accessing any supercomputer in the world, independently from time and space, is currently coming true, to perform even larger and more accurate computer simulations, at their finger tip. Today, high-speed networks transport data at the speed of light, middleware manages distributed computing resources in an intelligent manner, portal technology enable secure, seemless, and remote access to resources, applications, and data, and sophisticated numerical methods approximate the underlying mathematical equations in a highly accurate way. With the convergence of these core technologies into one complex service oriented architecture, we see the rise of large compute and data grids currently being built and deployed by e-Infrastructure initiatives such as DEISA, EGEE, NAREGI, and TERAGRID.

With the aid of one example, in this keynote presentation, we will elaborate on the Distributed European Infrastructure for Supercomputing Applications, DEISA, which recently entered its second phase. We will describe the system architecture, called the DEISA Common Production Environment (DCPE) and the DEISA Extreme Computing Initiative DECI attracting scientists all over Europe to use the networked supercomputing environment, and we will highlight a few impressive success stories from scientists who achieved breakthrough results so far which would not have been possible without such an infrastructure. Finally, we will summarize main lessons learned and provide some useful recommendations.

Wolfgang Gentzsch is Dissemination Advisor for the DEISA Distributed European Initiative for Supercomputing Applications. He is an adjunct professor of computer science at Duke University in Durham, and a visiting scientist at RENCI Renaissance Computing Institute at UNC Chapel Hill, both in North Carolina. From 2005 to 2007, he was the Chairman of the German D-Grid Initiative. Recently, he was Vice Chair of the e-Infrastructure Reflection Group e-IRG; Area Director of Major Grid Projects of the OGF Open Grid Forum Steering Group; and he is a member of the US President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST-NIT). Before, he was Managing Director of MCNC Grid and Data Center Services in North Carolina; Sun's Senior Director of Grid Computing in Menlo Park, CA; President, CEO, and CTO of start-up companies Genias and Gridware, and professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Applied Sciences in Regensburg, Germany. Wolfgang Gentzsch studied mathematics and physics at the Technical Universities in Aachen and Darmstadt, Germany

The talk will discuss some key ideas and concepts developed by the distributed computing community and examine their potential relevance to the development of networked computers.

David Peleg received the B.A. degree in 1980 from the Technion, Israel, and the Ph.D. degree in 1985 from the Weizmann Institute, Israel, in computer science. He then spent a post-doctoral period at IBM and at Stanford University. In 1988 he joined the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at The Weizmann Institute of Science, where he holds the Norman D. Cohen Professorial Chair of Computer Sciences. His research interests include distributed network algorithms, fault-tolerant computing, communication network theory, approximation algorithms and graph theory, and he is the author of a book titled"Distributed Computing: A Locality- Sensitive Approach," as well as numerous papers in these areas.

Cost-effective management of remediation of contamination sites and carbon sequestration in deep saline aquifers is driving development of a new generation of subsurface simulators. The central challenge is to minimize costs of cleanup and/or maximize economic benefit from an environment whose properties are only poorly known and in which a variety of complex chemical and physical phenomena take place. In order to address this challenge a robust reservoir simulator comprised of coupled programs that together account for multicomponent, multiscale, multiphase flow and transport through porous media and through wells and that incorporate uncertainty and include robust solvers is required. The coupled programs must be able to treat different physical processes occurring simultaneously in different parts of the domain, and for computational accuracy and efficiency, should also accomodate multiple numerical schemes. In addition, this problem solving environment or framework must have parameter estimation and optimal control capabilities. We present a "wish list" for simulator capabilities as well as describe the methodology employed in the IPARS software being developed at The University of Texas at Austin. This work also involves a close cooperation on middleware for multiphysics couplings and interactive steering with Parashar at Rutgers University.

After 24 years at Rice University, Professor Mary Fanett Wheeler, a world-renowned expert in massive parallel-processing, arrived at The University of Texas in the Fall of 1995 with a team of 13 interdisciplinary researchers, including two associate professors, three research scientists, three postdoctoral researchers, and four Ph.D. students. Professor Wheeler is not completely new to UT, however, having received a B.S., B.A., and M.S. degrees from here before transferring to Rice for her Ph.D. under the direction of Henry Rachford and Jim Douglas, Jr. Drs. Rachford and Douglas, both of whom conducted some of the first applied mathematics work in modeling engineering problems, have greatly influenced her career.

With the oil industry's strong presence in Houston, she was at the right place at the right time to advance the leap from theoretical mathematics to practical engineering. She correctly theorized that parallel algorithms would spur a technological revolution, offering a multitude of applications in the fields of bioengineering, pharmaceuticals and population dynamics. Her reputation as a first class researcher has led to several national posts, including serving on the Board of Mathematical Sciences, on the Executive Committee for the NSF's Center for Research on Parallel Computation and in the National Academy of Engineering. Housed in the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (TICAM) on the UT campus, Professor Wheeler has brought a level of prominence to UT that many believe will bring us into the forefront of applied mathematics.

As Head of UT's new Center for Subsurface Modeling (CSM), which operates as a subsidiary of TICAM, Professor Wheeler and her team focus their computer-based research on finding solutions for societal and environmental dilemmas using computer simulations to help with, among other things, effective reservoir management within the oil and gas industry. Understanding contaminant movement and enhanced oil recovery techniques can save billions of dollars in cleanup as well as production over the next couple of decades. Hazardous waste cleanup is incredibly important to society, she believes, and is an area of study that has only begun to be explored.

Because of the complexity of the problems, Wheeler and her associates must obtain data about the geology, chemistry, and mechanics of a site before they can begin to construct algorithms to accurately depict a simulation. Hence, the interdisciplinary nature of the work, which no one individual within a single department could tackle on his/her own. Yet Professor Wheeler has indeed made great strides toward obtaining expertise in several disciplines key to the success of parallel computing. Indeed, she holds joint appointments in the Departments of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, and Mathematics. She is also the first woman to hold an endowed Chair in UT's College of Engineering (the Ernest and Virginia Cockrell Chair in Engineering).

Dr. Wheeler's own research interests include numerical solution of partial differential systems with application to the modeling of subsurface and surface flows and parallel computation. Her numerical work includes formulation, analysis and implementation of finite-difference/finite-element discretization schemes for nonlinear coupled pde's as well as domain decomposition iterative solution methods. Her applications include reservoir engineering and contaminant transport in groundwater and bays and estuaries. Current work has emphasized mixed finite-element methods for modeling reactive multi-phase flow and transport in a heterogeneous porous media, with the goal of simulating these systems on parallel computing platforms. Dr. Wheeler has published more than 100 technical papers and edited seven books. She is currently an editor of four technical journals and managing editor of Computational Geosciences. In 1998 she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.