SZTAKI held a successful profession day about ELKH Cloud

SZTAKI, Wigner Research Centre for Physics and Eötvös Loránd Research Network (ELKH) held its professional gathering titled “ELKH Cloud in service of science: past, present, future” on Zoom and Youtube due to the pandemic on the 28th of October 2020.

The celebrational opening was held by József Bokor ELKH vice-president, science director of SZTAKI. This was followed by a short, historical presentation of the Cloud by ELKH professional lead and head of Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems, Péter Kacsuk, including upcoming developments.

Ernő Rigó, leader of Department of Network Security and Internet Technologies, presented infrastructure services by the Cloud, while Péter Kacsuk talked about platform services. Ádám Pintér, project lead of Wigner Data Center, held a presentation titled “Managed operations within the ELKH Cloud”.

After a short coffee break, SZTAKI Department of Distributed Systems leader László Kovács talked about data repositories supported by the Cloud. Róbert Lovas, deputy director of SZTAKI and project director at ELKH Cloud, presented the Cloud’s role within the handling of the Hungarian coronavirus pandemic.

Participants had the chance to listen to presentations of two research groups already using the Cloud: Grögy Mező astronomer talked about its use in astronomy while Zoltán Kacsuk introduced its function within his Hungarian Comparative Agendas Project research. Presentations were closed by Gábor Kertészt SZTAKI researcher, talking about the bases of potential artificial intelligence solutions of the Cloud.

The event was closed with a round table discussion moderated by József Kadlecsik from WDC. Questions were answered by Péter Kacsuk, Ernő Rigó, György Mező and Ádám Pintér. Main topics were the size of the Cloud, and its future; including circumstances required for Hungarian researchers to start to use AI and cloud solutions on a wider spectrum. Questions asked on Zoom were also answered.

Péter Kacsuk explained that if one wouldn’t know how to start to use the Cloud should expect educational materials, classes and frequent trainings – the first was already held, read the summary here.