The Computer Network Information Center (CNIC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) signed an agreement with the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) Foundation on June 23 to launch cooperation on open science cloud, hoping to develop more flexible and interoperable e-infrastructures and services for supporting global research activities.

The EGI Foundation is a not-for-profit foundation established under the Dutch law to coordinate the EGI federation, an international collaboration that federates the digital capabilities, resources and expertise of national and international research communities in Europe and worldwide.

"To respond to the pressing global challenges such as epidemic control and disaster risk reduction, the Academy has laid great emphasis on the role of openness and cooperation to support international research activities in health science, earth science and other data-intensive fields. According to the most recent statistics of Nature Index, the international percentage of our collaboration has risen to over 32%, with three European research organizations ranking at the top of our global partners", said ZHUANG Yan, Division Director of CAS Bureau of International Cooperation.

"This trend of global research activities imply changes for the scientific infrastructure", said WANG Shuzhi, Deputy Director General of CAS Office of General Affairs. "The desired infrastructure should enable flexible access, analysis and cooperation. In fields such as health and environmental science, federated networks might be used to gather necessary information without sharing the data itself for privacy and other concerns."

The two sides began the negotiation and discussion in 2019, and have reached a consensus on a five-year cooperation plan to develop technologies and demonstrations for the incubation of a global open science cloud in the long run. 

As the organization to construct China Science and Technology Cloud, the Academy's integrated e-infrastructures for research, CNIC finds its niche to start the cooperation with EGI to bridge the new infrastructures in China and Europe.

The Chinese government is speeding up the investment to construct new infrastructure including the next-generation infrastructure for research and education. "And CNIC has a role to play in this national plan", said LIAO Fangyu, Director of CNIC.

CNIC has been closely engaged in CAS initiatives to develop digital research capacities in various aspects such as Internet, data and computing. "Driven by scientific question to develop next-generation infrastructures, we have created a research recipe in various fields such as future network, cloud computing, big data and high-performance computing," said LIAO.

"In the long run, I hope our cooperation with EGI and other international partners will contribute to the development of cyber-infrastructures across borders and global open science initiatives," he said.

"Driven by global challenges to support international research activities and connect e-infrastructures, this cooperation is of great importance for us to tackle the problems and find solutions together", said Arjen van Rijn, Council Chair of EGI.