PHIN Impressions - from the Savel

Greetings all...

Those who know me...know that I am a profound PHIN evangelist. This year's conference had a significantly different feel from the previous years - and was...a great conference.

I moderated many sessions - and all were very strong and well attended. Of course, I thought that the GRID-related sessions were outstanding.

Take-away issues: There was a lot of buzz around "grid" - and it's clear that over the next few months, a lot of coordination and communication needs to take place.

From the sessions and ad-hoc meetings I attended, it is very clear to me that we have just cracked open the door into the world of grid / distributed computing. What's behind that door? Something amazing... of this I have no doubt. What will it look like? Time will tell - and that's the beauty of research and discovery.

We are discovering the pieces of the puzzle - and with the amazing collaborative effort of our national and international partners....it's clear that we will be making amazing progress in the months ahead. It's a true privilege to be part of this effort.

Just think for a moment about a few of the pieces of the puzzle we have discovered:

Taverna (essentially yahoo pipes for distributed computing)
DCQL
VBroswer
Globus
MonALISA
OGSA-DAI
GridGrouper
Gridifying Services via caGRID tools

As we work closely with our public health partners - we look forward to providing the public health community powerful new tools and resources.

I can only imagine the progress we will have made - before the 2009 PHIN Conference.