Luděk Matyska from the Masaryk University in Brno has been Elected Chairman of the Project Management Board of the International EGEE II Project

RNDr. Luděk Matyska, CSc. from the Institute of Computer Science and the Faculty of Informatics of the Masaryk University in Brno, researcher participating in grid research activities of the CESNET association, has been elected Chairman of Project Management Board of the international project developing the EGEE II Pan-European grid infrastructure. Luděk Matyska acts in the Project Management Board as a representative of the Central European federation, uniting – apart from the Czech Republic – Austria, Poland, Slovak Republic, Hungary, Slovenia and from the middle of this year, Croatia. Luděk Matyska will perform the new function until February of next year, when he will take over to Professor Manuel Delfino from Spain. The election of Luděk Matyska as the leader of the Project Management Board is perceived as an acknowledgement of the existing activities of Czech experts.

The EGEE II project represents a seamless follow-up of the two-year EGEE (Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe) project, which was included in the 6th EU Framework Programme. The EGEE was completed this May. With a budget of EUR 35 million, the project has aimed at interconnecting European national, regional and thematically-oriented grids into a unified European grid infrastructure. This infrastructure is now available to those members of the academic community who can benefit from its computing and storage capacity.

The project is realized through the joint efforts of more than 90 institutions from many European countries, Russia and the USA as well as some Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea. The only institution from the Czech Republic participating in the project is the CESNET association, concentrating experts and teams from several institutions, especially the Masaryk University in Brno, Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen and Charles University in Prague. As in the case of the EGEE project, the Czech Republic will participate in all basic areas of the EGEE II project, including middleware development. In this sphere, the Czech Republic will remain the only participant from all countries of Central as well as South and South-west Europe.

The CESNET association was founded by universities and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The association is currently financed mainly from the resources of the governmental Committee for Research and Education and the resources of the members of the association. The association performs research and development in the area of information and communication technologies, building and developing the national gigabit optical network, CESNET2, designed for research and educational purposes. Due to the research activities and results achieved, the CESNET association acts as a representative of the Czech Republic in the project within which the pan-European network called GEANT2 is constructed, actively taking part in the implementation of this project as well.