Abstract

A collaboration of U.S. domain and computer scientists from U.S. universities and national laboratories has since 1999 conducted a multifaceted R&D program aimed at building large-scale Grid cyberinfrastructure in the U.S. This collaboration has led to the creation of Open Science Grid consisting of more than 60 sites and serving multiple disciplines, including particle physics, gravitational wave searches, digital astronomy, genome databases, nanoscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging, etc. OSG will also link many campus and regional grids and much progress has been made in federating with TeraGrid (US), caBIG (cancer research), EGEE (Europe) and grid projects in South America and Asia.

This collaborative work has provided a wealth of results, including powerful new Grid tools and services; a uniform Grid middleware packaging scheme (the Virtual Data Toolkit) that simplifies Grid deployment across many sites; integration of complex Grid tools and services in large science applications; multiple education and outreach projects; and new approaches to integrating advanced network infrastructure in Grid applications.