Cyberinfrastructure in New York State - Grid Computing: Infrastructure, Service, and Applications - page 47

on Data-Driven Science and Cyberinfrastructure.” At this meeting, Miller
presented the Cyberinstitute of the State of New York (CSNY), an effort
that was being established within SUNY-Buffalo's Center of Excellence in
Bioinformatics and Life Sciences (BCOEBLS). Critically, it was disclosed,
with permission from the director of BCOEBLS and following the
announcement of CSNY that was approved by SUNY-Buffalo's senior vice
provost, that CSNY would include: (1) the Center for Computational
Research; (2) faculty working in computational science and engineering;
(3) faculty working on fundamental problems in cyberinfrastructure, and
well as (4) enabling staff, including programmers, GUI designers, and per-
sonnel focused on integrating middleware with applications.
Miller also presented an overview of the Center for Computational
Research and ongoing efforts in his Cyberinfrastructure Laboratory. At the
end of the meeting, the attendees decided to move forward with another
meeting to continue to discuss the possibility of a cyberinfrastructure
initiative in New York State. In addition, the membership asked Miller
during the open discussion at the end of the meeting whether the NYS
Grid could serve as the underlying grid architecture for this potential
state-wide cyberinfrastructure initiative so that the potential cyberinfra-
structure initiative could focus on higher-level issues than a fundamental
grid, avoid redundancy, and avoid a duplication of effort. Miller agreed
and over the next several months his team brought a number of additional
sites online and his group worked closely with other groups around the
state to educate system administrators on how to deploy and maintain a
node on a grid, how to obtain a certii cate (using the GRASE certii cate
that was maintained by NYS Grid), and other related information.
In September 2006, Miller gave a presentation at the second NYS
Cyberinfrastructure meeting. In this talk, he discussed the status of the
NYS Grid; gave an overview of grids and cyberinfrastructure in gen-
eral; and discussed related grids, details of installing a grid node, funding
opportunities, and related information (please refer to the appropriate
talks on www.cse.buffalo.edu/faculty/miller/talks.shtml). At the end of
the September meeting, an inaugural board was voted on by the member-
ship. This board would have a term of one year and would be required at
the end of the year to (1) propose a set of by-laws to be voted on by the
membership, (2) present a clear mission statement and vision for the cyber-
infrastructure initiative, and (3) provide a status report of activities.
Each initial board member was in charge of one of seven working groups:
(1) resource provider group; (2) user group; (3) technical working group;
(4) communications group; (5) education, outreach, and training group;
(6) funding group; and (7) infrastructure group.
Subsequent to this meeting, the group established a Website and chose
the name NYSGrid as the name of this organization, causing signii cant
confusion nationally between this grassroots NYS Cyberinfrastructure
Initiative and the New York State Grid (NYS Grid), established years
earlier by Miller's Cyberinfrastructure Laboratory.