iVEC 'The hub of advanced computing in WA'

Monday, September 21, 2009: Submissions for posters and live demonstrations due

Location:: Novotel Manly Pacific, Sydney, Australia
Description:: Researchers, practitioners, and educators from diverse disciplines are invited to participate in eResearch Australasia 2009, to be held 9 - 13 November at the Novotel Manly Pacific, Sydney, Australia. Please see http://www.eresearch.edu.au/participation for further information.

Submissions for presentations, workshops, and BoFs must be received by Monday 29 June 2009. Submissions for posters and live demonstrations must be received by Monday 21 September.

eResearch Australasia 2009 is supported by the Australian Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and underwritten by The University of Queensland. More than 400 delegates attended in 2008; see www.eresearch.edu.au/archive.

Theme: No boundaries

We live in a world of dissolving boundaries. Constraints of geographical and physical space are losing their meaning. The line between the real and the virtual is blurring. In many countries it is possible to communicate instantly with nearly anyone, run services in the cloud, and fit a library into a pocket. Ease in amassing and linking data from different sources is creating an unprecedented wealth of information about people, genes, behaviours, and places; however using this information raises ethical and sociological challenges. We’ve also learned at great cost that economies and ecosystems alike are knit together in global interdependency; consequences do not stop at borders but affect everyone on the planet in astonishing ways.

Today’s and tomorrow’s big research questions are too complex to be contained within a single field; to answer them we need to break down silos and build on the collaboration of humanists and scientists, scholars and technologists, governments and industry. Equally, the "long tail" of smaller research projects is not beyond any boundary: these too can be advanced cooperatively through new techniques and environments.

What challenges are raised by a world with no boundaries? What potential can we unlock?

Conference aims

eResearch focuses on technological platforms that enhance researchers’ ability to generate, collect, share, analyse, store and retrieve information. All sessions, workshops, BoFs, posters, and meetings should support the conference aims. eResearch Australasia aims to provide:
· A catalyst for innovation and collaboration, by bringing together bringing together researchers, practitioners, and educators from diverse disciplines;
· A forum to support the development, enhancement, and harmonisation of national, regional, and discipline-specific eResearch services and infrastructures;
· A showcase for innovative science and research enabled through these technologies and services.

Topics

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
· Applications and exemplars using eResearch infrastructures (e.g. data or compute grids, modelling or visualisation tools, collaboration environments, high performance computing, trust federations, etc) in any research discipline, such as
o Arts, humanities, and cultural heritage
o Astronomy and physics
o Bio, medical, and health sciences
o Environmental, climate, agricultural, and geo sciences
o Materials, chemical, and physical sciences
o Social sciences, finance, and law
· Technology and services, such as
o Collaboration environments
o Data management and curation
o Identity and access management
o Grids, computing, and networks
o Modelling and visualisation
· Frameworks and other issues, such as
o eResearch training and capability development
o International standards and frameworks
o Legal and policy frameworks
o Supporting eResearch within and between organisations
Types of participation

You can participate by submitting an abstract for a presentation, birds of a feather session (BoF), poster, or workshop. Instructions for each category are below. Please note that in order to participate you must register for the conference by 5 October as a regular or student delegate. Registration will open in August.

Presenting a session
Concurrent sessions are short presentations of 20 minutes. They are conversation starters, providing enough information to encourage the audience to engage and seek further information.

Convening a BoF
BoFs (birds of a feather sessions) are 60-90 minute sessions that bring together individuals interested in a given topic for guided discussion and networking. They provide a more open forum for exploring issues and questions.

Presenting a poster
Posters enable individuals or groups to display information about innovative projects or activities in an informal, interactive environment. They can include live demonstrations. Posters will remain in the display area throughout the conference. A poster session will be held Tue 10 Nov, 5:15 – 6:45pm to allow poster presenters to stand near their posters and talk with delegates. Poster abstracts may be submitted up until 18 Sep 2009; however early submission is appreciated. Poster presenters will be notified on a rolling basis.

Running a workshop
Workshops may be half-day or full-day and will take place on Mon 9 Nov and Fri 13 Nov. Workshops enable a more detailed or hands-on exploration of a topic. The primary convener for each workshop will receive one complimentary conference registration.

Postgraduate student bursaries

A small number of postgraduate student bursaries are available to provide financial assistance in attending the conference. To be eligible you must be a postgraduate student, and your submission must be accepted into the conference programme. If you would like to be considered, please indicate this in the box provided on the submission form.

Important dates

Mon 29 Jun
Last day to submit an abstract for presentations, BoFs, and workshops
Fri 24 Jul
Workshop conveners notified
Fri 14 Aug
Other presenters notified
Mon 21 Sep
Last day to submit an abstract for a poster
Mon 19 Oct
Last day for abstract changes prior to publishing delegate handbook
Mon 26 Oct
Supplemental material due for inclusion in conference collection
Mon 9 Nov
Conference begins

How to make a submission

To submit an abstract please use the author submission form at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=era09. If you have not used EasyChair before, you will need to create a login account before entering your submission. If you have forgotten your username or password, help is available from the login screen.

Abstracts are due by 29 June 2009. Note that EasyChair enables you to update your submission prior to the deadline.

Your submission should include:
· A short abstract of no more than 300 words in the EasyChair submission form. The short abstracts are published in the delegate handbook and on the conference website.
· An extended abstract of no more than 2 pages, using the template provided below. This should be uploaded as an attachment to the EasyChair submission form. The extended abstracts are included in the conference repository collection. There is one template for presentations, BoFs, and posters; a separate template for workshops.

Download template for presentations, BoFs, and posters

Download template for workshops

Selections for all submissions will be based on the following criteria:
· Alignment with the conference aims;
· Interest/relevance to the eResearch community;
· Quality of the submission – clarity and readability;
· Sufficiency of information.

Additional criteria will be used for selection of presentations:
· Originality;
· User community involvement – how broad is the user community;
· Demonstration of eResearch practices – in other words, researchers applying technologies in their work, rather than presenting plans or concepts for technologies/services which are not yet in use.

To participate, you will also need to register for the conference no later than 5 Oct 2009.

If you have any questions or any difficulty using EasyChair, please contact eresearch2009@eresearch.edu.au.

The programme committee includes Nick Tate (Chair), The University of Queensland; Ian Atkinson, James Cook University; Ann Borda, VeRSI; Lindsay Botten, NCI; Mike Briers, SIRCA; Ashley Buckle, Monash University; Paul Coddington, ARCS; Rhys Francis, AeRIC; Ian Gibson, Intersect; Chris Hancock, AARNet; Jane Hunter, The University of Queensland; Clare McLaughlin, DIISR; Patricia McMillan, The University of Queensland; Peter Nicholson, DIISR; Bernard Pailthorpe, QCIF; Jim Richardson, The University of Sydney; Andrew Treloar, ANDS and Robert Woodcock, CSIRO.

We hope you can join us. For more information, please visit http://www.eresearch.edu.au.