New year, new representatives in the EGI Governance bodies
Some changes have occurred in the composition of the EGI Governance since the last EGI Council meeting.
EGI Executive Board
In fact, it is time to say thank you and goodbye to Vincent Breton, Director of France Grilles, who has served on the EGI Executive Board from 2021 until December 2022 (and previously also from 2012 to 2016).
Thanks also to Matthew Dovey, Head of e-Infrastructure Strategy at JISC, who has also concluded his second term on the EGI Executive Board.
On the other hand, we happily welcome two new Council Members:
- Mehmet Mirat Satoglu from TUBITAK ULAKBIM, and
- Pierre-Etienne Macchi from IN2P3 Computing Centre
Mehmet Mirat Satoglu, Director of TUBITAK ULAKBIM, the Turkish NREN. He currently represents TUBITAK and Turkey, acting as a delegate in GÉANT, SCOAP3, EOSC, EGI and EuroHPC boards. Mehmet holds a BS degree from the Computer Science department, Bilkent University and MSc and MLA degrees from Ege University and University of Pennsylvania, respectively. He worked as an IT professional for nearly 20 years at various international companies before joining TUBITAK ULAKBIM. He has been leading TUBITAK ULAKBIM since 2014.
Pierre-Etienne Macchi is the director of the IN2P3 Computing Center, a thematic computing centre in France dedicated to research in high energy physics, nuclear physics and astroparticle physics. He acts as the IN2P3 representative at the CNRS e-infrastructures committee, and in close coordination with the IN2P3 management, he participates in the policy definition of the Institute about computing. He attends the Group Council of France Grilles, to which IN2P3 is the primary resource provider. He is also the CNRS representative at the French NREN (RENATER) board of users. He participates in various reflection groups set up by the French research ministry about data centres and research data organisations. After a two-year break, he comes back to the EB with the aim of supporting the Foundation’s activities.
EGI Council Chair
We say goodbye to Arjen van Rijn (NIKHEF), who served as the EGI Council Chair for two mandates; you will read more about his experience as a chair in the next newsletter. We warmly welcome Volker Guelzow (DESY), as the new EGI Council Chair.
In the same Council meeting, the EGI Director Tiziana Ferrari has been appointed for another 5-year mandate, for which we sincerely congratulate her!
During my term, EGI Federation and EGI Foundation have faced several challenges, including the COVID-19 crisis, the war in Ukraine and its consequences on the European economy. Despite these challenges, EGI has continued to actively and significantly contribute to constructing the European Open Science Cloud, thanks to its flagship role in key European projects. In future, I believe that EGI will further progress the work towards its vision, which is to share expertise and resources for science across countries and disciplines. The services offered by the EGI federation to the research communities are needed to enable the full data life cycle across all scientific domains in Europe and beyond. EGI’s activities are, therefore, of the utmost importance for the success of the European Open Science Cloud.
Vincent Breton, Director of France Grilles.
We are very excited about the change that EGI.eu is going through, especially towards implementing EOSC. EGI.eu services and the federated cloud structure have served numerous research groups for a long time since its inception - and my institute TUBITAK ULAKBIM has been one of the founding partners of EGI.eu. I believe EGI.eu organisation has several advantages in positioning itself towards providing critical EOSC services. During my time, I have repeatedly seen how important it is to be involved in projects and provide paid services to receive financing to meet performance targets. I am very excited to be joining the executive board, supporting the bold steps taken by EGI in its transformation to continue to be a crucial part of the changing landscape of European research e-Infrastructure for the next decade.
Mehmet Mirat Satoğlu, TÜBİTAK ULAKBİM