At the end of September 2005, the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science in Europe (ROSTE) and CERN organized a joint event on Grid computing, which was sponsored by Hewlett-Packard (HP). Current and future Grid participants, universities, and research institutions - with a special focus on south-eastern European countries - were invited to CERN to learn about the capabilities and opportunities of the Grid. The event included talks by representatives of existing Grids such as the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE project, but best practices were also presented by regional research institutions and universities on establishing new - and connecting to existing - e-infrastructures.
"Grid computing is as important a shift as the Web has been," said Howard Moore, director of UNESCO-ROSTE. "It will change the face of how science resources are shared and management of results will be handled." The more tangible benefits of Grid computing - access to computing resources and cutting-edge technologies outside the local region - help universities and small research groups to attract students, thus maintaining talent in the area and alleviating the brain drain. Bringing people together to talk about Grid computing can increase researchers' motivation, by giving them the feeling of being part of a bigger whole.
Over the past decade, countries in south-east Europe suffered emigration of up to 70% of skilled professionals. In 2003, UNESCO launched the Alleviating Brain Drain project with HP to provide Grid computing technology to universities and financial support to encourage young scientists to remain in the region and cooperate with their fellow-nationals living abroad.
The event at CERN was an important step, but the road does not end there, as Bernard Meric from HP pointed out: "Grids will move from scientific research to the citizen. It is just a question of time. A meeting like this can accelerate this movement from scientific research to beyond."
The event led to the decision to hold a training event in Split, Croatia, later this year. This training, to be organized by CERN and SEE-GRID, will act as a pilot event for a CERN School of Computing in Croatia in 2007.
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Compiled by Hannelore Hämmerle and Nicole Crémel