Particle Physics' 2020 Vision: A Benefit to All
Thu 28 May 2009
Today the Institute of Physics launches "Particle Physics - It Matters". The document is a look ahead at particle physics research in the UK and the impact it could have, and has had, on industry and society as a whole. Of course, no discussion of the impact particle physics has had outside the lab would be complete without talking about the World Wide Web and its direct descendant, the grid.
As the report outlines, work for particle physics also benefits other disciplines. In the case of the Grid, biomedical research has been quick to jump on the new technology and is now the 5th largest user of European Grid (EGEE) resources, behind the four LHC experiments. The biomedical share in the UK and Ireland federation (UKI) within EGEE is even greater. It now accounts for almost 10% of the usage within the region, coming in as the 4th largest user of UKI resources, just edging out the researchers working on the H1 physics experiment at DESY.
For the biomedical team the UKI has been a very important resource, providing more than a third of all their computing. GridPP's Project Leader is impressed with the progress of the biomedical community and has been glad to be able to help other disciplines by making resources available in the lead up to the LHC. He remarks "it has been necessary to deploy these resources in order to perform full-scale tests for LHC data but it has been gratifying to see opportunistic use during the quieter periods contributing to such important issues as cures for malaria and avian flu".
In the 4 years since the the biomedical team started using the EGEE resources the UKI has contributed 11,346,200 hours (almost 1,300 years) of CPU time. GridPP has reported on this contribution to their malaria and avian flu work previously.
Top 5 Teams across EGEE by usage- ATLAS
- CMS
- ALICE
- LHCb
- Biomed
- ATLAS
- LHCb
- CMS
- Biomed
- H1
http://www.iop.org/News/file_34737.pdf
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