Overview and objectives

The EthERNet e-Research Hackfest was held at the EthERNet premises in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) on February, 13-24, 2017. In total, 8 instructors (3 in person and 5 from remote), 4 selected candidates and about 20 other attendees from Ethiopia, Italy and South Africa participated to the hackfest.
The event was supported by the European Commission through EthERNet’s participation in the Ubuntunet Alliance, which is one of the partners of the Sci-GaIA project.
The EthERNet e-Research Hackfest was the second “in-Africa” replica of the e-Research Summer Hackfest and its main objectives were: (i) to integrate African scientific use cases through a pervasive adoption of web technologies and standards and make them available to their end users through Science Gateways(1), and (ii) deploy collaborative web-based services and platforms for the Ethiopian academic and research community. Overall, 3 use cases where developed during the hackfest in Addis Ababa, of which one related to the integration of 2 applications in the Africa Grid Science Gateway. Promoting and fostering open and reproducible research was the ultimate goal of the EthERNet e-Research Hackfest.

Topics

The following topics were tackled during the WACREN e-Research Hackfest:

  • Distributed computing services
  • Distributed storage services
  • Programmatic access to Open Data repositories
  • Semantic federation of Open Access repositories
  • User interfaces (web, desktop, mobile, etc.)
  • Open courseware
  • Web forums
  • Event management systems

Tools and technologies

The following tools and technologies were showcased at the WACREN e-Research Hackfest and used to implement the proposed use cases:

AGENDA VIDEO LECTURES & TUTORIALS VIDEO “MOMENTS”

Resources

Roberto Barbera
UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA - ITALY
- The Sci-GaIA project and introduction to the hackfest: Slides , Video
- Programmatic interaction with Open Access Repositories: Slides, Video
- Scientific use cases supported by the Sci-GaIA project: Slides, Video
Bruce Becker
CSIR - SOUTH AFRICA
- Patterns in e-Science Applications: Slides , Video
Riccardo Bruno
INFN - ITALY
- The FutureGateway framework: Slides , Video
Antonio Calanducci
UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA - ITALY
- The gLibrary framework: Slides - Video, Video live demo
Marco Fargetta
INFN - ITALY
- Identity Federations - Overview: Slides, Video
- Identity Federations - Installation and operation: Slides, Video
Behailu Korma
Education Strategy Centre - Ethiopia
- Education e-Library and MOOC Platform for Ethiopian Research and Education Communities: Slides, Video
Rita Ricceri
UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA - ITALY
Support during practicals
Mario Torrisi
UNIVERSITY OF CATANIA - ITALY
- Science Gateway - Overview and Internals: Slides , Video
- Support during practicals

Integration of Computational Chemistry applications in the Africa Grid Science Gateway

The objectibe of this use case is to integrate Computation Chemistry applications needed by the Ethiopian research community, such as Gaussian and Quantum EXPRESSO, in the Africa Grid Science Gateway.
Presentation - Intermediate report - Final report Mekuanent Getachew, EthERNet - Ethiopia

The EthERNet Educational Repository

Ethiopia has over 33 public universities and these Universities do not have repositories to publish research papers, student theses and other publications and to be visible in the national and international research community. By providing EthERNet Research & Education Repository through the educational private cloud, the universities can leverage the rich functionalities that will be offered through the Sci-GaIA Open access repository’s underlying Invenio platform. This use case leverage parts of a use case developed by Mr. Yosef Abate and Mr. Behailu Korma in the WACREN e-Research Hackfest held in Lagos, Nigeria.
Presentation - Intermediate report - Final report Eyuel Mulatu, EthERNet - Ethiopia

The Ethio-Forum

The goal of this use case is to deploy a subset of the services of the Sci-GaIA Open Science Platform, namely the web forum based on Discourse and the event management system based on Indico, to create a web-based collaboration environment for Ethiopian academia and research.
Presentation - Intermediate report - Final report Alazar Alemayehu, EthERNet - Ethiopia

ABAYINEH, Abera
Hawassa University

ALEMAYEHU, Alazar
Ethernet


Roberto Barbera
University of Catania

Bruce Becker
CSIR - South Africa

BEYENE, Berhanu


BRUNO, Riccardo
INFN, Italy

CALANDUCCI, Antonio
University of Catania

DESALEGN, Frehiwot Belay
Jimma University


DINKU, Yared
Ethiopian Civil Service University


FARGETTA, Marco
INFN- ITALY

GAMTESA, Talile
EthERNet
Mekuanent Getachew
EthERNet

GFRERER, Margareth
Education Strategy Center

HEMERU, Helina

KORMA, Behailu
Education Strategy Center


MARCHESE, DOMENICA
PI4 S.r.l.s.

MULUGETA, Roger
Ethernet

MULATU, Eyuel
EthERNet

MUSA, Salahadin
Jimma University

OSURE, Ronald
KENET

Ricceri, Rita
University of Catania

SAMUEL, Nebiyou
EthERNet

SISAY, Ephrem Hilemariam
EthERNet


STRINO, Patrizia
PI4 S.r.l.s

TADESSE, Tilahun
Ethiopian Civil Service

TESFAY, Rahel
EthERNet

TOLLERA,Wondante
Arsi University

TORRISI, Giuseppe
PI4 S.r.l.s.

 

TORRISI, Mario
University of Catania

YOSEF, Biweded
Ethiopia Civil Service University

 

Contacts

In you have any enquiries regarding the EthERNet e-Research Hackfest, feel free to contact [email protected].

 

1A Science Gateway (also known as a Virtual Research Environment or a Virtual Laboratory) is a “community-development set of tools, applications, and data that is integrated via a portal or a suite of applications, usually in a graphical user interface, that is further customized to meet the needs of a specific community“ [TeraGrid/XSEDE].