Presenter

Rob Allan obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Atomic Physics from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1983. Since 1987, he has lead several groups of software developers at STFC's Daresbury Laboratory and is currently leading the Technology Support activity in the Hartree Centre. Rob's background is as a researcher doing large scale computational modelling. He has an interest in distributed ICT service development and deployment and user interfaces for research, mainly in the natural sciences. He has also developed numerical algorithms and parallel computing and Grid tools for users of high performance computing resources. Rob has a practical knowledge of Grid and Web services middleware and helped to set up STFC's e-Science Centre, the UK's Grid Support Centre and more recently the Hartree Centre. He has co-authored a number of research papers, technical reports and books. He has more recently written a book entitled "Virtual Research Environments: from Portals to Science Gateways" published by Woodhead Publishing (2009).