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Externally funded projects

EXPReS

The EXPReS project (Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service, http://www.expres-eu.org/) was an Integrated Infrastructure Initiative (I3), funded under the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), contract number 026642, from March 2006 through August 2009. Coordinated by JIVE and comprised of 19 astronomy institutes and National Research and Education Network (NREN) providers around the world, EXPReS established and improved network connectivity from some of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes to the correlator at JIVE, and also improved the computing capabilities of the correlator itself.

EXPReS was organized into seven activities:

Activity # Activity Type Activity Name
NA1 Networking Management of I3
NA2 Networking EVN-NREN Forum
NA3 Networking e-VLBI Science Forum
NA4 Networking e-VLBI Outreach, Dissemination & Communications
SA1 Service Production e-VLBI Service
SA2 Service Network Provision for a Global e-VLBI Array
JRA1 Joint Research Future Arrays of Broadband Radio Telescopes on Internet Computing

EXPReS successfully demonstrated its advances in e-VLBI on a few different occasions in 2009.

  • In January, a “marathon e-VLBI” session of 33 nearly-continuous hours was coordinated, involving 17 telescopes on five continents, and demonstrated live to attendees of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009) Opening Ceremony in Paris.
  • The EVN participated in IYA 2009's “100 Hours of Astronomy” cornerstone project with:
    • e-VLBI observations on 3 and 5 April
    • a live webcast as part of the “Around the World in 80 Telescopes, Live 24-hour Research Observatory Webcasts”

Progress made during EXPReS, as well as science made possible by EXPReS, was communicated at the week-long "Science and Technology of Long Baseline Real-time Interferometry: The 8th International e-VLBI Workshop" in Madrid, Spain, in May 2009. A timeline of project milestones is available.

EXPReS formally ended in August 2009 and had its Final Project Review in November 2009. It was serendipitous that in November, Nature accepted a paper based on e-VLBI observations made possible by EXPReS. The EC graded the project as “extraordinarily successful” and encouraged the team to “explore any opportunity for further development”. A press release was issued at the conclusion of the review: EXPReS hailed as "extraordinarily successful" and influential to SKA design

NEXPReS

Overview

NEXPReS (Novel EXplorations Pushing Robust e-VLBI Services, http://www.nexpres.eu/) is the follow-on project to EXPReS. Comprised of 15 astronomical institutes and NREN providers, NEXPReS in an e‑Infrastructure project of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement RI‑261525, and will run from August 2010 through July 2013. NEXPReS is funded at 3.5 million EUR with the aim of further developing e-VLBI services of the EVN, with the goal of incorporating e-VLBI into every astronomical observation conducted by the EVN. JIVE is the coordinator of NEXPReS and plays a lead role in leadership of project.

NEXPReS is organized into three activities via eight work packages:

Work package # Activity Type Work Package Name
WP 1 NA Management
WP 2 NA EVN-NREN
WP 3 NA eVSAG
WP 4 NA Communications and Outreach
WP 5 SA Cloud Correlation
WP 6 SA High Bandwidth on Demand
WP 7 JRA Computing in a Shared Infrastructure
WP 8 JRA Provisioning High-Bandwidth, High-Capacity Networked Storage on Demand

Summary

NEXPReS has just completed its first six months, so the progress, while on schedule, is in the early stages. The most relevant activity was the First Board Meeting, held 20 September 2010 in Manchester, UK.

RadioNet EVN TNA

7.2.2. Access to the EVN

The FP7 RadioNet EVN Trans-National Access (TNA) programme provides funding

to EVN telescopes to provide access to eligible projects, and supports travel by investigators from eligible projects to visit JIVE or another EVN institute. An eligible project is one in which the PI and at least 50% of the author list as a whole are associated with institutes in the EU member and associated states, excluding the Netherlands as the host country of JIVE. Table [##5] summarizes various statistics from the past two years of EVN TNA activity.

                                                          2009    2010

Number of eligible observations 67 87

 comprising how many proposals                             37      46
 comprising how many individual researchers               105     143

Number of different PhD students in supported groups 14 15

Total number of access hours 598.5 747.5

Number of data reduction visits 6 7

  number of data reduction visits made to JIVE              3       5

Table [##5]: Annual statistics for various aspects of the EVN TNA programme over 2009-10.

2009/project.txt · Last modified: 2011/03/31 12:24 by 127.0.0.1