Past Event – 2020 Program

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In the early days of Globus, Ian Foster, Steve Tuecke and myself defined the Grid as being driven by:

coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations. The sharing that we are concerned with is not primarily file exchange but rather direct access to computers, software, data, and other resources, as is required by a range of collaborative problem-solving and resource- brokering strategies emerging in industry, science, and engineering.

With the near ubiquitous accessibility of cloud infrastructure, and the proliferation of sophisticated services, it is easy to forget this initial driver behind Grid computing and Globus. In my talk, I will revisit the concept of virtual organization in terms of how collaborative, multidisciplinary teams form and work to solve challenging problems in science and engineering. I will discuss the role that socio-technical systems organized around structured data sharing can play in coordinating work. Finally, I will describe new work processes and technical infrastructure that uses Globus services that have played a critical role in accelerating discovery in diverse complex problem spaces.