Enabling and Improving Research Output : e-Infrastructure and services for African research communities

Friday 11 Mar 2016, 09:00 → 15:30 Africa/Lagos

Seminar Room 104 (Human Resource Development Centre (HRDC))

Charles Uwadia (Chair, Board of Trustees, Eko-Konnect)

The event is open to all researchers, and will have contributions from both sides of the e-Infrastructure equation.

An overview of the e-Infrastructure model would be given, explaining how NRENs and other institutes provide services to research communities and how researchers could typically benefit from these services.

Examples of services are

• Identity Federations : Improving access to services and researcher mobility
• Computing and Data Infrastructures: Enabling digital research and teaching
• Collaboration tools : enabling research communities in conducting the day-to-day execution of their research
• Open Access data and document repositories : improving the visibility and impact of research, and access to research output.
• Interoperable infrastructures : removing barriers to regional and international collaboration

This is the outline of the "offer", to start the conversation.  In reply, we will showcase a few outlines of the "demand" - presentations by researchers which have need of some or all of these services.   They will outline their research agenda and explain the typical workflow.

The seminar will end with a round-table discussion

09:00 → 10:30 Session 1

09:00 Welcome Address

Speaker: Prof. Charles Uwadia (Chair, Board of Trustees, Eko-Konnect)

09:20 A Federated Platform For Open Science

Access to relevant services is crucial to the smooth execution of collaborative research. This presentation will provide an overview of a model of these services and how, using identity federations and service interoperability, research communities can access, exploit and collaborate around a wide set of services necessary for the smooth execution of their research programme. We show how various models of research projects can be improved and accelerated by using the services in the platform.

Speaker: Dr Bruce Becker (Meraka Institute, CSIR for Sci-GaIA project)

Slides open-science-lagos.pdf

09:55 Large data and biomedical computational pipelines for complex diseases

Speaker: Prof. Ezekiel Adebiyi (The Covenant University Bioinformatics Research Group (CUBRe))

Slides large_data_biomedical_computation_EA-100316.pdf

10:30 → 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 → 12:30 Session 2

11:00 Statistical Kinetic Data Analysis and Scientific Graphing

Speaker: Dr Chukwuemeka Isanbor (University of Lagos)

Slides kinetic_data_analysis_and_graphing.pdf

11:30 e-infrastructure as a rescue for the atmospheric sciences

How e-infrastructure addresses some of issues facing atmospheric science research.

Speaker: Prof. Gbenga Jegede (Atmospheric Physics Research Group: Obafemi Awolowo University)

Slides e-infrastructure_for_collaborative_research___EkoKonnect_Seminar_jegede.pdf

12:00 Fostering Identity Federations in West and Central Africa - WACREN EduID

WACREN EduID is infrastructure for federated authentication and authorisation among participating organisations to promote the use and adoption of Identity Federations and shared e-Research services. The presentation will include a demonstration of existing infrastructure in WACREN including the Catch-all Identity Provider of the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN)

Speaker: Mr Omo Oaiya (CTO. WACREN)

12:30 → 13:30 Networking Lunch

13:30 → 15:00 Session 3

13:30 NRENs : tying together communities

An NREN is more than just a provider of connectivity : by design, it reaches the largest possible technical and scientific communities. The services needed by research communities are often varied and complex, and providing them at scale is where an NREN usually proves it's worth. We will discuss the value proposition of the NREN in taking ownership and curating community participation on these tools, in Nigeria and discuss how this has had success on other regions. Proposals for how institutes can contribute to and benefit from the coordination of these services and collaboration with the NREN will be discussed.

Speaker: Mr Owen Iyoha (General Manager, Eko-Konnect)

Slides Tying_Research_Communities_Together.pdf

14:00 Roundtable Discussion

Opening the floor to discussion and ideas (all)

14:45 → 15:00 Session 3: Closing Remarks

Convener: Prof. Charles Uwadia (Chair, Board of Trustees, Eko-Konnect)