There were three days of intense activity, including lectures, presentations, corridor talks and a certainty: after three editions, the Latin American e-Science Meeting has already established itself as an important forum for the exchange of knowledge and good practices in e-Science in the region.
Held in conjunction with the TICAL2019 Conference from September 2-4, 2019, at the International Convention Center in Cancun, Mexico, the e-Science Meeting, created in the framework of the BELLA-T Project, brought together over 300 participants who participated in its plenary sessions and followed the debates and discussions on the six presentations of works chosen for this third edition. Topics covered at the “e-Science” parallel sessions included treatments for depression, climate change challenges, mammography tools, and atmospheric sciences, among others.
Two of the plenary sessions also addressed more specifically issues related to e-Science. Jeffrey Kantor, LSST Information Technology Manager, presented the challenges and opportunities posed by the Telescope's network infrastructure for space exploration activities, while Bruce Howe, a professor at the University of Hawaii and chair of the international task-force known as SMART Cable Initiative, addressed climate change issues and opportunities for NRENs to be more “environmentally responsible ”.
Howe and Kantor's lectures are now available on the RedCLARA YouTube channel, and the papers presented at the event can also be found in the e-Science Meeting Procedures Book, available at https://redclara.net/index.php/en/pages/actividades/encuentro-e-ciencia
Dozens gathered to know more on BELLA
During the second day of the meeting's activities, the presentation of the BELLA Project and its advances attracted the attention of dozens of participants at the RedCLARA stand at the Business Fair. Similar to what happened at TNC, GÉANT's annual conference, the International Relations Manager of the pan-european network, Tom Fryer, explained to the attendees the concept of the BELLA Programme and how its submarine phase (BELLA-S) is being implemented. BELLA-S consists of the installation of an underwater cable (EllaLink) that will connect Fortaleza, in Brazil, to Lisbon, in Portugal, enabling transatlantic connectivity between Latin America and Europe to enhance academic collaboration between the two regions.
Fryer was accompanied by RedCLARA's Technical Manager Marco Teixeira, who provided an overview of the project's terrestrial phase, BELLA-T, which aims to increase RedCLARA's backbone capacity in Latin America. The presentation is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLY14cq78T0&t=195s
The e-Science Meeting is possible exactly due to the BELLA-T project, that created this activity as a space for the face-to-face exchange of knowledge and good practices in the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in research, with a view to contributing to the improvement and optimization of the management and work of the scientific groups in the region.
The third edition of the Latin American e-Science Meeting was hosted by the BELLA-T project, together with RedCLARA and RedCUDI, sponsored by Google for Education, Amazon Web Services, Century Link, Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, Internet Society, Canvas, Wolfram, Business Totalplay, Cirrus Identity, University of Quintana Roo, SheerID, CloudHesive Latam, Lacnic, MS2S Group, Sophos and ProtektNet.
