EGI Community Forum 2013, at its second day in
the University of Manchester: EMI, more precisely SciencePAD (Platforms, Applications, Data), keeps
focussing on sustainability. This time the curtains opened the scene on
Knowledge and Technology Transfer (KTT).
It seems indeed to be one of the best approaches.
Why? Let’s consider…Have you ever considered how technology affects our
everyday lives, so much so that we don’t even think about it? Just consider what
each day will be without technology. You wake up to an electronic alarm; brush
your teeth with an electric toothbrush while the coffee is getting ready and
the television is on with the last news. What is the first thing you do at
work? Sit in front of the computer and read e-mails from anywhere in the world.
Directly or indirectly, technologies can have a
significant impact, sometimes less evident, in every aspect of your life. Even
though we can easily access them, this is not for granted but it is the results
of a long process. For centuries, in the quest to find out responses to its
major queries, fundamental research developed very sophisticated instruments
using cutting-edge technologies and requiring performance that often exceeds
the available industrial know-how. Technology has promoted and still promotes
on all levels the injection of science into daily life in many different ways.
For example, nobody would ever have thought that a phenomenon based on the
theory of quantum mechanics – quantum entanglement – would find practical
applications in the fields of cryptography, computing and, who knows even teleportation
in the future, leading to the creation of new companies to secure information
sharing. Moreover, technological developments most often require the
involvement and interaction of experts in a large variety of domains, such as
IT and derivatives, thereby resulting in technological cross-fertilization and
knowledge transfer.
“SciencePAD allows decisions to be taken based on
knowledge shared and verified by a large community of experts, for developers
to share their software, researchers to get the needed support, companies to
offer services, and sponsors to assess the projects’ impact. – Says Alberto Di
Meglio, EMI project director and chair of the SciencePAD collaboration. –– Just
as today, the EMI project is able to help the complex relationship among
experts (developers, users, service providers, research communities, commercial
companies, etc.) working in the different data environments (Cloud, desktop,
stand-alone, High-Performance Computing, etc.).”
So, let’s see more specifically what the
SciencePAD KTT future requirements are:
1. To
understand how to manage software information within scientific communities
2. To
formalise such information and its integration with the other digital entities
3. To
guarantee the long-term preservation and re-use of software, especially related
to data
4. To
realise a data-driven Software as a Service
prototype platform for research.
Last, but not least:
5. To
investigate the constraints, conditions and tools required to promote the
transfer of ideas and people from academic research to commercial endeavours.
Thanks to the technologies developed for the purpose
of research activities, scientific laboratories have produced improvements in
many fields (beyond their specific domains), making our daily environment more
functional, practical and comfortable. Researchers are continually working to
find better solutions for technical and scientific problems from which the
entire humanity profits. Even being aware, they know what Winston Churchill
meant when saying: “Success is never final, and failure is never fatal”.
So, EMI (or better SciencePAD) must go on…
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