The kick-off meeting of the S2I2-HEP Conceptualization project begins today at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) .

The worldwide particle physics community is currently planning upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva. The LHC today already uses a worldwide distributed computing grid to meet the needs of thousands of scientists to process and analyze some of the world's largest scientific datasets. The upgrades being planned will increase data volumes by more than two orders of magnitude and require significantly more complex data and analysis techniques.

This kick-off workshop aims to bring together a diverse set of attendees from the particle physics and computer science (CS) communities to understand how the two communities could work together in the context of a future NSF Software Institute aimed at supporting particle physics research over the long term. While CS experience and expertise has been brought into the HEP community over the years, this is a chance to take a fresh look at planned HEP and computer science research and brainstorm about engaging specific areas of effort, perspectives, synergies and expertise of mutual benefit to HEP and CS communities, especially as it relates to a future NSF Software Institute for HEP. 

The workshop is organized around a series of panels and breakout sessions tasked with identifying technical and organizational challenges, and proposing ways in which a Software Institute could be structured to address them.  All participants are asked to contribute actively in these sessions, whether as part of a panel or a member of the audience.  A poster session and reception is planned to allow for more fluid conversations.

Workshop agenda: https://indico.cern.ch/event/575443/