Evolution of Middleware for Grid-based Instruments and Sensors, or Why Facebook, MySpace and Social Computing Really Matter

Date : 15/08/2007,

Location: Caulfield

Presenters: Donald F. (Rick) McMullen Director and Principal Scientist Knowledge Acquisition and Projection Lab Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University

Abstract: Instruments and sensors are the source of data used to drive discovery in science. The availability and accessibility of appropriate instrumentation for a given research programme can be a rate limiting factor in discovery. Furthermore sensors and sensor networks are playing an ever-increasing role in how measurements are made in longitudinal studies in ecological, earth and biological sciences. The Common Instrument Middleware Architecture (CIMA) aims at providing access to remote instruments and sensors by giving users and providers of real-time data with interface and protocol standards needed to locate and interact at a distance with real-time data sources, particularly scientific instruments and sensors. In this talk I will give an update on the status of the CIMA project and how ideas from social computing that are driving the development of Web 2.0 technologies are also evolving CIMA’s stodgy old WS-* architecture. Could sensors and instruments really be as cool as writing on the wall?

Speaker biographies: Rick McMullen is the Director and Principal Scientist of the Knowledge Acquisition and Projection Lab in the Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University, a founding faculty member of the Indiana University School of Informatics, and adjunct faculty in the Computer Science Department. His research interests include sensor networks for scientific research and critical infrastructure monitoring, instrument sharing and remote access to instruments, high performance research networking, knowledge representation for cooperative work by humans and machines, knowledge management (KM) in virtual organizations, and AI applications in KM. Rick’s background is in Physical Organic Chemistry and he received a Ph.D. in 1982 from Indiana University