JIVE was created by the European Consortium for VLBI and is a member of the European VLBI Network (EVN). Its primary task is to operate the EVN MkIV VLBI Data Processor (correlator). JIVE also provides a high-level of support to astronomers and the Telescope Network. JIVE is hosted by ASTRON (the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy) in Dwingeloo, The Netherlands. JIVE is funded by the national research councils and national facilities including: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), Onsala Space Observatory (OSO), National Geographical Institute (IGN), Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR), Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy (ASTRON). JIVE’s mission is to (i) maintain and develop the EVN data processor at JIVE, (ii) support astronomers and the network of radio telescopes in Europe, (iii) develop new technology for VLBI (both hardware and software), (iv) advance VLBI observing techniques and apllications; (v) conduct cutting edge astronomy using VLBI and other astronomical facilities. JIVE staff are also active in supervising both PhD students at Universities and local postdocs.

JIVE will act as the Project Coordinator for this project, responsible for communicating with the EC and mediating financial transactions between the EC and partners. Additionally, JIVE staff members will lead Work Packages: WP1, WP4, WP5, WP6, and WP7.

Dr. Huib Jan van Langevelde is the director of JIVE and will be the Project Coordinator for NEXPReS. Van Langevelde was the Project Coordinator for the EXPReS Project in which 19 partner institutes connected radio telescopes located around the planet via shared e-Infrastructures to showcase the scientific improvements possible when research hardware is used in conjunction with the infrastructure. Van Langevelde has worked at many of the international VLBI institutes observing masers, his specialty. Van Langevelde has an appointment at Leiden University where he supervises PhD students.

Dr. Arpad Szomoru has been at the forefront of developing the e-VLBI technique in Europe as both an astronomer and software engineer. Szomoru received his PhD in 1994 from the University of Groningen on research titled “Void Galaxies” and spent several years in academia before joining JIVE in 2000. Szomoru was lead the Production E-VLBI Service activity in EXPReS, which developed operational e-VLBI tools used in conjunction with the EVN correlator. Szomoru will head the cloud computation service activity for NEXPReS.

Paul Boven studied applied physics at the University of Twente. He previously worked at SARA, the Dutch national center for high performance computing and networking where his responsibilities included high level system management and design, sales support and external consultancy. He joined JIVE in December 2006 as the network administrator for the EXPReS project. In the past few years at JIVE he has designed and implemented the JIVE networking facilities to enable real-time e-VLBI, and managed the international connectivity for JIVE. He has led the drive to achieve 1024Mb/s e-VLBI capability for most of the EVN telescopes, and pioneered some novel networking uses such as 'Merlincast' (the use of Multicast to duplicate VLBI data streams) and 'Elliptical Robin', a skewed traffic distributor.

Dr. Mark Martinus Kettenis is working as Software Project Scientist at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE). Kettenis received his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands under supervision of Dr. L.G. Suttorp and Prof. Dr. H.W. Capel. In December 2001 he successfully defended his Thesis titled “On the Inhomogeneous Magnetised Electron Gas”. Kettenis joined JIVE in 2004 after working in industry for several years. He has worked on or is currently involved with several projects including ParselTongue, the MkIV hardware correlator, the software correlator and the international VDIF taskforce. He is also core developer of the OpenBSD operating system and long-time contributor to GDB, the GNU debugger.

ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, and is part of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). It provides the front-line observing capabilities of the WSRT and LOFAR radio telescopes for use by Dutch and international astronomers in a wide range of fundamental astrophysical research projects. ASTRON has a strong and broad technology development programme, encompassing both innovative instrumentation for existing telescopes and the new technologies needed for future facilities. ASTRON also conducts a vigorous programme of fundamental astronomical research. ASTRON is involved in large scale software and system development. It coordinates the EC FP7 RadioNet and FP6 SKADS programmes and participates in various other EC projects: EXPReS FP6, and PrepSKA FP7. ASTRON enjoys extensive collaborative contacts with Dutch Universities and Radio Astronomy institutes all over the world. ASTRON will be involved in WP6 and WP8 and it will lead tasks related to the integration of long term archives within the NEXPReS framework.

Dr. Hanno Holties is System Engineer in the Radio Observatory department of ASTRON. He received his PhD in Physics for research on fusion plasmas through numerical simulations. Since 2002 he has been responsible for the software and ICT systems of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT). Within the RadioNet FP6 program, Holties has led a project developing the NorthStar tool supporting astronomical proposal submissions and assessments. This tool is currently in use by telescopes worldwide and it is currently being extended to support optical telescopes as an objective within the OPTICON FP7 program. From 2007 he has been Liaison for the Radio Observatory to the LOFAR development project and is responsible for the design and implementation of the LOFAR Long Term Archive. This activity entails building an archive distributed over European compute centers to be operational in 2010. Besides managing and contributing to the related activities at ASTRON, it involves participating in international working groups and coordinating activities with two major Dutch computing projects (BiG Grid and Target).

Dr. Tom Oosterloo is Senior Astronomer in the Astronomy Department of ASTRON. He received his PhD in Astronomy in 1988 for research titled 'Angular Momentum in Binary Spiral Galaxies' under supervision of Dr. Albada. He has held positions at ESO (Garching), RGO (La Palma), ATNF (Sydney), and INAF-IASF (Milan) as Astronomer and Software Specialist. Oosterloo is the Principal Investigator for the APERTIF project which is an upgrade project for the WSRT enhancing the data taking capabilities resulting in a large increase of the produced data rates. He is member of several astronomical Programme Committees, the ASKAP Survey Science Programme Committee, and has been the ALMA System Scientist for Executive Software. Oosterloo is currently supervising two PhD students and has published over 100 astronomical papers in refereed journals.

Dr. Peter Maat is Optical System Engineer in the Research and Development department of ASTRON. He received his PhD in Applied Physics at the Delft University of Technology for the research on photonic integrated electro-optic switches for optical communication systems. From 2000 to 2003 he worked as research scientist at the R&D lab of JDS Uniphase at Eindhoven, where he worked on the development of source lasers and photonic integrated circuit technology. At ASTRON he leads, as wide-area-network workpackage manager, the development and roll-out of the data transport system for the international LOFAR telescope and is, as leader of the photonic technology development activity at the ASTRON R&D lab, responsible for the initiation and execution of R&D projects for the development of innovative photonic data processing and transport systems for phased array radio telescopes.

The Istituto di Radioastronomia (IRA), member of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF) operates major national infrastructures (the Medicina and Noto 32-m radio telescopes) and is responsible for design, construction and operation of the Sardinia Radio Telescope, a parabolic 64-metre antenna. IRA is a funding member of the European VLBI Network (EVN) and member of the International VLBI Service for Astrometry and Geodesy (IVS). It is involved in major international ground-based projects such as ALMA, LOFAR and SKA. IRA hosts the Italian ALMA Regional Centre on behalf of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica. IRA has gained expertise in the development of state-of-art components for mm/submm receivers including MMICs and has extensive experience in working with cryogenically cooled low-noise amplifier systems. In the framework of the EC funded project FARADAY, IRA prototyped a multi-feed array cryogenically cooled receiver at 22 GHz, and is developing a new generation of multi-purpose digital back-ends for radio astronomy. IRA supports various high-level educational programmes (Courses, Master Thesis and PhDs) in collaboration with several University Departments in Bologna, Cagliari and Catania.

Dr. Franco Mantovani
Senior Scientist of the Istituto di Radioastronomia with main scientific interest in Active Galactic Nuclei, polarimetric inteferometry, radio source evolution. Involved in VLBI activities for many years, he was Board member of European VLBI Network, of the International Square Kilometre Array Steering Committee, of the Internationl VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry, of the EXPReS project. He will coordinate the tasks assigned in NEXPReS JRA2 to the Istituto di Radioastronomia.

Dr. Mauro Nanni
Senior Technologist of the Istituto di Radioastronomia with expertise in software for data analysis and archiving. He coordinated the Astronomical Database WG for the National Astronet project, and worked in astronomical archives projects like AVO and Skyeye. He designed the network of the CNR Campus in Bologna. He is Chairman of the campus computer science commission and member of the CNR and INAF commission for network infrastructures and services. Responsible the Italian network for the e-VLBI he managed the IRA participation in the EXPReS project. He coordinates the relationships between Emilia-Romagna Region, INAF, and GARR (the Italian NREN) for optical fibres connection of the Italian radiotelescopes and the GARR PoP network. He is Board member of the CyberSar project aiming to set up and connect the “grid clusters” of the scientific network of the Sardegna Region. He will have an active role in the NEXPReS JRA2 activities.

The Max-Planck-Institut fuer Radioastronomie (MPIfR) is one of 80 independent research institutes of the Max Planck Society (Max-Planck-Gesellschaft - MPG). The institute is primarily active in the areas of radio astronomy and infrared astronomy. The institute operates the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg, one of the world's most important facilities in radio astronomy. The MPIfR leads as well the operations and further development of the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), a 12-m telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert built in 2005. The institute completed in 2007 the first stage of the international LOFAR station DE-1 at the Effelsberg site. In 2009 the 2nd half of the station was installed. MPIfR staff has been involved in very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) since the mid 1970s and has been operating five generations of VLBI correlators. Currently, the MPIfR operates a new-generation correlator - a software correlator as a result of an international cooperation with the USA, Australia, Italy and Finland. The MPIfR hosts several technical labs which develop technical equipment for mm-cm, mm-submm, infrared, and optical telescopes. In terms of future observational and development activities, the institute takes part in a number of large projects, such as the German-American airborne observatory SOFIA, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the further upgrade of the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg, the planning of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), optical interferometry facilities (VLTI and LBT), and the further development of VLBI at high resolutions (millimetre wavelengths and space VLBI). The MPIfR has been and is currently active in a number of EU-funded collaborations, e.g. under FP7: RadioNet & PrepSKA.

MPIfR personnel has outstanding knowledge in virtually all areas of the VLBI observing technique like e.g. Field System and antenna calibration. In cm-VLBI MPIfR is an important member of the European VLBI network (EVN), the High Sensitivity VLBI Array (HSA) and co-observes regularly with the US VLBA array. The MPIfR organizes the Global mm-VLBI Array (GMVA), a 13-antenna array which observes regularly at 86 GHz and correlates all data thereof. A major activity is the development of the “Event Horizon Telescope” which is a new VLBI network at ~300 GHz aimed at observing the direct vicinity of super-massive Black Holes.

The MPIfR will contribute as a participant in task 3 of WP5 (Cloud Correlation). The proposed task builds directly on the work done by the MPIfR within the FABRIC JRA of EXPReS. All MPIfR personnel involved in FABRIC will also actively contribute to NEXPReS, hence making optimal use of the experience gained in EXPReS.

Participants: Prof. Dr. A. Zensus (Director) will be overall responsible for the participation. He will be a member of the new Board. Dr. Walter Alef (head of the VLBI technology department; actively involved in EXPReS) will be responsible for the administration and organization of the NEXPRES activities at MPIfR. Dr. Helge Rottmann (member of the VLBI technology department, actively involved in the EXPReS JRA: FABRIC) responsible for the development of the DiFX Correlator and of the new digital VLBI Backend - DBBC. He will manage the implementation of task 3 in WP5. Dr. Dave Graham (member of the VLBI technology department). He will assist the project as a technology advisor in all aspects of task 3, particularly with field system integration issues.

UMAN is the largest single-campus university in the UK, with 27,000 undergraduate and 10,000 postgraduate students. It spends ~ £300M annually on research. The Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA), which is an integral part of UMAN’s School of Physics and Astronomy, is, with 180 staff and students, the largest astronomy and astrophysics group in the UK. JBCA runs Jodrell Bank Observatory, home of the 76-m Lovell Telescope, and the e-MERLIN/VLBI National Facility. It has a broad ranging research programme, from studies of solar plasmas to the origins if the Universe, and most astrophysical phenomena that lie therein. JBCA also has a strong technology programme, with groups working on instrumentation R&D for multi-pixel cameras for studies of the Cosmic Microwave Background; for a wide range of technologies for the SKA, for broadband data transmission, for improved receiver systems and for algorithmic development. JBCA is also the host organisation for the SKA Programme Development Office and the ALMA Regional Centre.

Prof. Ralph Spencer is Acting Director of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester and His PhD (1970) was in cosmic ray physics He has worked on the development of interferometers for radio astronomy since the 1970’s, leading work on the development of phase stable radio linked interferometers with 100 km baselines. This work led to the development of the MERLIN array of 7 telescopes now operated as a National Facility by the University of Manchester for PPARC. His interest in VLBI started in the late 1970’s and was responsible for running VLBI operations at Jodrell Bank Observatory until the mid 1990’s, when the National Facility took over. European development of the 1 Gbps MkIV tape VLBI system was led by him until 2001. The electronics in this system now feed signals to the 1 Gbps Mk5 disc recorder used in routine operations. A pioneering demonstration at IGRID 2002 showed the feasibility of using the internet at high data rates for VLBI, and work on this has continued with recent developments using switched light paths provided by the UKLight project. The ESLEA project, exploiting UKLight has enabled up to 1 Gbps real time operations in e-VLBI. He is head of the fibre optic group at Jodrell Bank which has developed the use of fibres in radio astrronomy for data transport at rates up to 120 Gbps. His astronomy research has concentrated on the properties of microquasars. He has over 200 publications. Ralph is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Prof. Simon Garrington is Director of Jodrell Bank Observatory and is project manager for e-MERLIN, a 12Million Euro project to upgrade the MERLIN network of radio telescopes spread across the UK. This has involved the installation of approx 100 km of new optical fibre to connect the remote telescopes to dark fibre trunks that have been leased from various providers. Along with the fibre connections, the project includes new receivers, signal processing and transmission electronics and a new central correlator capable of handling 240 Gb/s input. He is also a lead investigator of AstroGrid, the UK Virtual Observatory project, a lead member of ALBUS, an FP6-funded software project and a task leader for SKADS, the Square Kilometre Array Design Study. He has developed software for radio interferometry and continues to be involved in MERLIN and VLBI operations at Jodrell Bank Observatory. His research uses arrays of radio telescopes (EVN, MERLIN, VLBA, VLA) to address a range of topics from young stars to distant galaxies and he has over 100 scientific publications, including well-cited work on radio galaxies and quasars. Other key personnel at Jodrell Bank are Paul Burgess (Snr. Scientific Officer) and Dr. A. Gunn.

Dr Neal Jackson is a Reader in Radio Astronomy at the University of Manchester. His PhD (1989) at Jodrell Bank was in the study of active galaxies using radio and optical observations. Following that he spent 2 years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manchester, and then 3 years as a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden Observatory, Netherlands, working on observational astronomy including radio observations and HST data. He then obtained a lectureship at the University of Manchester. His main research interests are in the study of gravitational lensing, a significant part of which has been VLBI studies of the CLASS radio-loud gravitational lens survey. He is also PI of an e-MERLIN legacy project on gravitational lensing, which is likely to include followup observations with other radio arrays including VLBI in order to measure mass distributions in distant galaxies. He has nearly 150 publications including 90 in refereed journals; he is also a member of the Netherlands telescope Programme Committee, and coordinates and EU Marie Curie Training Site.

Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) is the Swedish National Facility for Radio Astronomy. It is operated by Chalmers University of Technology. The Swedish Research Council evaluates and provides funding for its operation. OSO operates two telescopes at Onsala, a 25-m cm-wave telescope and a 20-m mm-wave telescope. It is one of three partners in the APEX Project, a 12-m sub-mm telescope at 5100 m altitude in Chile. Through this, Sweden has 21% of the APEX observing time (Chilean time subtracted). OSO also has a strong receiver development programme for mm and sub-mm wavelengths. OSO’s main purpose is to provide Swedish, and international, astronomers with the possibility to pursue astronomical research in frequency bands in the radio range from about 0.8 GHz up to 1.5 THz. In addition, OSO provides the channel through which Sweden is involved in large international radio astronomy projects, such as the EVN, JIVE, LOFAR, SKA, and ALMA.

Dr Simon Casey is a research engineer at Onsala Space Observatory. His undergraduate studies were in technological physics at the University of Manchester, resulting in an MPhys degree in 2004. He completed his PhD work at Jodrell Bank Observatory in 2008, which involved investigating the use of the UDP protocol for high-speed e-VLBI data transport, and observing the effects of missing data on VLBI correlations. He has a good knowledge of programming in C and C++, and is also experienced in debugging performance issues in end-hosts.

Ventspils University College (VUC) is one of the leading higher education establishments in Latvia. VUC offers both academic and professional studies in various specialities, particularly in Electronics and Information Technologies. During the academic year 2009/2010 VUC counts for 900 full time students. Three research institutes are established at VUC. Two of them – Ventspils International Radioastronomy Center (VIRAC) and Research Engineering Centre (REC) will be involved in in the NEXPReS. The primary tool of VIRAC for radio astronomical observations is the 32-m diameter radio telescope (RT-32), situated 30 km appart from Ventspils. This radio telescope, left by Soviet Army after its withdrawal from Latvia, is now being equipped with the necessary equipment in order to take part in VLBI and single dish radio astronomy observations. There are 10 scientists holding the doctoral degree who are staff members of VIRAC. The a minimal staff of technical personal at VIRAC – 7 technicians and engineers – is bare enough for successful RT-32 operation. Number of them is expected to rise when financial support allows. The main objective of REC is to provide advanced problem solving services and to promote technological competitiveness and development of electronics and electrical engineering sector. REC conducts applied research in mathematic modeling, telecommunications, electronics and engineering. The main tool for the high performance computing (HPC) in REC is computational cluster server (30 DELL PowerEdge1955 blade servers, with total computing power of 120 3GHz Intel Xenon CPU, 4cores*30nodes, Gigabit ethernet transport protocol between nodes, OS – Linux_64). There are 10 scientists holding doctor’s degree who are staff members of REC. REC technical personal consists of 14 researchers and specialists. Several students are doing their thesis and other research activities at VIRAC and REC.

Dr. Ivars Smelds (Leading researcher of VIRAC and senior lecturer of VUC ) is the main person involved in the EXPReS project from VIRAC. He is the leader of VLBI group of VIRAC and is responsible for developing VLBI technologies and their implementing on Irbene Radio telescope. His research interests lies in the field of interstellar matter as well as in the radio location of solar system natural and artificial bodies. Ivars Smelds also serves as teacher in VUC. Hi is working hard to involve the best students in radio astronomical researches.

Dr. Normunds Jekabsons (Leading researcher of REC and senior lecturer of VUC ) is the key person involved in the Project's high performance computing (HPC) activities. His recent scientific interests are related to Computer Fluid Dynamics, Mathematical Homogenization over random unit cell in advanced materials research field, utilization, coding and local development of HPC systems. He is author of VUC undergraduate and master degree courses of numerical methods, basic computing algorithms and UNIX OS.

FG (Fundacion General de la Universidad de Alcala) coordinates and manages administrative issues related to Third Parties, the European Commission and other bodies on behalf of the University of Alcala. The IGN (Instituto Geografico Nacional), as a third party to FG, operates national facilities at Yebes including the recently commissioned 40-m, millimeter-wave, radio telescope. IGN is particularly involved in RF-technology development including quasi-optics, in its laboratories at Centro Astronomico de Yebes (CAY-OAN). IGN successfully organized the week long Science and Technology of Long Baseline Real-Time Interferometry: The 8th International e-VLBI Workshop as part of the EXPReS project and will build upon the work to organize NEXPReS's eVSAG meetings, including the end of NEXPReS Sci/Tech Workshop.

Dr. Francisco Colomer Born in 1966 in Valencia (Spain). Graduated in 1989 from University of Valencia, got his PhD in Astronomy and Space Sciences from Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) in 1996. He spent half of the PhD time at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (USA). Since 1998 he is permanent staff at Observatorio Astronomico Nacional (OAN-IGN). Coordinator of the overall VLBI activities for Astronomy and Geodesy, is an active researcher in the field of studies of spectral line emission in evolved stars using very long baseline interferometry, with more than 70 publications in refereed journals and 700 citations. He is also Project Manager at OAN/IGN of EC financed contracts (RADIONET, SKA-DS, EXPReS, Marie-Curie, etc). Responsible of the Networking Activity #3 in NEXPReS.

Dr. Pablo de Vicente Graduated from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1986. Spent predoctoral fellowshipsat IRAM (France) and Max-Planck Institut für Radioastronomie (Germany). He got his PhD at UCM in 1994. He is coordinator of the technical aspects of VLBI at OAN/IGN, including the new 40-m radiotelescope at Yebes, which is linked to GEANT thanks to EC project EXPReS. Member of the EVN Technical Operations Group (TOG).

Dr. Rafael Bachiller Graduated in Astrophysics and Fundamental Physics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) in 1979, got his PhD at Université de Grenoble in 1985, and from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1986, when he became permanent staff at Observatorio Astronomico Nacional (OAN-IGN). He is Director at OAN since 2002. Active researcher in the field of star formation, in particular studying mm- and submm-wave spectral lines, with more than 150 refereed publications. Member of the board of NEXPReS and RADIONET.

NORDUnet is the regional research & education network for the 5 Nordic countries (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland). NORDUnet has more than 25 years of history in state of the art networking for the research community, and has participated in numerous advanced international initiatives, including EU-funding initiatives. Recent initiatives include strong contributions to 6NET, GN2, GN3, and FEDERICA.

NORDUnet today has a fibre-and-DWDM core infrastructure providing lambda and hybrid networking services and a state of the art 10 Gbps IP network. In addition, NORDUnet hosts the Nordic Data Grid Facility (NDGF), an advanced facility for e-Science and grid computing, several high-level services for the research community, and is provides operations and management services through the Nordic University NOC (NUNOC). As such, NORDUnet is a provider of infrastructure for education and (e)science.

Lars Fischer – Chief Technology Officer – is responsible for leading development initiatives and projects within NORDUnet. He leads NORDUnet’s participation in European projects and initiatives, and its relationships with European NRENs and the European networking community. He also coordinates Nordic e-Infrastructure initiatives in collaboration with Nordic partners and works with Nordic advanced users of e-Infrastructure. Before joining NORDUnet in 2004, Lars spent ten years in the Internet and telecommunications industry as Technical Director at Tele2 and COLT Telecom. Before this, Lars carried out research into programming systems and collaborative computing environments. Lars has worked with advanced networking and computing systems for the past 25 years.

Brian Bach Mortensen – Optical Network Architect – has a PhD in Electronic Engineering (on hybrid electro-optical packet switches). He previously worked at the Technical University of Denmark, and has been work package leader in the MUPBED FP6 project. His work areas are optical networking and control planes technologies.

Alberto Colmenero – Optical Network Architect – joined NORDUnet in 2007 and has since worked on the design and definition of NORDUnet’s L2 transport network. He is responsible for architectural service and network evolution of the L1 and L2 network. Alberto has a BSc in Telecommunication Engineering, and during his ten-years in the telecommunications industry has worked with the design and implementation of L1, L2 and L3 access and transport networks.

SURFnet is the National Research & Education Network (NREN) organisation in The Netherlands. SURFnet develops and provides innovative services for education and research in the field of network infrastructure, authentication and authorisation and on-line multimedia collaboration services. SURFnet provides access to these services to over one million users in higher education and research in the Netherlands.

SURFnet is part of SURF, the collaborative organisation for higher education institutions and research institutes which are together working on breakthrough innovations in ICT. For more than 20 year SURFnet has been one of the world’s leading research network operators. More information can be found at: http://www.surfnet.nl/en/

Kees Neggers is one of the founders of SURFnet in the Netherlands and has been one of its Managing Directors since 1988. He received an Electrical Engineering degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1972. Neggers started his carrier as a staff member of an advisory committee on computing infrastructure to the Dutch Minister of Science and Education. He worked at the Computing Centre of the University of Groningen from 1975 – 1984. In 1984, Kees became one of the managing directors of the University Computing Centre in Nijmegen, where his networking carrier started. Nijmegen became the Dutch national node in EARN and was one of the drivers towards a national research network in the Netherlands. From there on, Neggers became heavily involved in international research networking. He was among the founders of RARE, ISOC and the RIPE NCC, and served for many years on the Boards of these organizations. During these terms he was involved in many initiatives, notably COSINE, CCIRN, Ebone, DANTE, Amsterdam Internet Exchange, the merger of RARE and EARN into TERENA and more recently GLIF, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility.

Peter Hinrich studied Physical Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam. After receiving his degree on the subject Laser Spectroscopy of supercooled molecules in 1989 he moved to Leiden University where he received his PhD in Theoretic Chemistry in 1995. After a short period working as a post-doc, he joined SURFnet in 1996, where he started as Account Advisor. Currently, Peter is Community Manager Science and is responsible for the communication between SURFnet and the scientific user community, informing them about posibilities new technology offers and identifying their requirements.

Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) is affiliated to the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej PAN) and is responsible for the development and management of PIONIER, the national research network in Poland, which is connected to the GEANT2 network at the speed of 10Gbit/s. PSNC employs about 200+ people. It is an HPC Center, Systems and Network Security Center as well as R&D Center of New Generation Networks, Grids and Portals. PSNC is also the operator of Poznań Metropolitan Area Network POZMAN. PSNC is the Centre of Excellence of Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Innovation Center. The institution participates in numerous EC projects of the 5, 6 and 7 FP e.g.: European: RINGrid (031891, PSNC is the project coordinator), DORII (Deployment of Remote Instrumentation Infrastructure - coordinator), GridLab(PSNC was the project coordinator), CrossGrid, EGEE, EXPRES, int.eu.grid and national founded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education: PROGRESS, Virtual Laboratory, SGIgrid - High Performance Computing and Visualisation with the SGI Grid for Virtual Laboratory Applications, PL-GRID and PLATON.

PSNC has a significant experience in different strategic areas like: High Performance Computing, interactivity and visualization, distributed environment, remote instrumentation, software frameworks, workflows or networking required to achieve all the project objectives. The lesson learned from work on distributed software correlation within FABRIC (JRA of EU EXPReS project) is a great advantage in the future work. PSNC will use its knowledge and experience in the project participating in new functionality development of real time distributed correlator, workflows and deployment of the distributed computing infrastructure (DCI) within work package 7 – Computing in a Shared Infrastructure.

Dr. Norbert Meyer is the head of the Supercomputing Department in PSNC. His research interests concern resource management in GRID environment, GRID accounting (Global Grid Forum), data management, technology of development graphical user interfaces and network security, mainly in the aspects of connecting independent, geographically distant Grid domains. He is currently the EU DORII project coordinator, coordinator of the former EU RINGrid project, and National Data Storage. NM is author and co-author of several reports and papers (60+). Dominik Stokłosa received M. Sc. degree in Computer Science (specialty: software engineering) from the Poznan University of Technology in 2003. In 2009 he finished a postgraduate studies: Project Management at Poznan School of Banking. Since 2003 works for Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center. He participated in several national and international projects concerning distributed computing domain e.g. VLab, RINGrid, DORII. Ha was also a member of FABRIC team within EXPReS project working on distributed software correlation. Dominik Stokłosa has a practical knowledge of Java based technologies. Since 2007 he is Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform. He is also a member of Poznan Java User Group.

Damian Kaliszan graduated from the Poznań University of Technology and received his M.Sc. in Computer Science (Computer Integrated Management and Production Systems) in 2001. He was also involved in RINGrid and DORII projects. His research interests include data mining, web and Java related technologies. Marcin Lawenda currently works for Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center on the project manager position in the Virtual Laboratory project. Marcin Lawenda is the workpackage leader of a national project grid technology oriented and research grant of the Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology. He was deputy manager in the RINGrid project and quality manager in DORII (http://www.dorii.eu). His research interests include parallel and distributed environments, scheduling and Grid technologies.

Mateusz Pabiś finished Master of Engineering studies at Technical University of Gdańsk in 2006 with major in distributed systems architecture. His thesis concerns reliable grand-scale parallel environment. His current professional interests concern distributed file systems and distributed computations. He is also interested in grand-scale data mining and data processing. Currently he holds position of Java developer at High Performance Computing departmnet in PSNC. He was involved in g-Eclipse and EXPRES projects. After work he takes part in some programming contests and studies psychology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.

In partnership with the National Research Networks and in cooperation with the European Commission, DANTE plans, builds and operates advanced pan-continental optical hybrid communication networks for research and education. These provide essential e-infrastructure both across Europe and globally. In EXPReS, DANTE were responsible for co-ordination of the requests for 1 gigabit point-to-point circuits to connect the telescopes. DANTE also led the work on provisioning and analysing the performance of the 4 gigabit Lightpath from Onsala to Jodrell Bank.

> - the main tasks they have been attributed
WP2 EVN NREN Forum
Probably WP6 as well - discussions taking place on this.

> - the previous experience relevant to those tasks
Successfully led the interface activity between the NRENs and the
EXPReS project.

A short profile of the individuals who will be undertaking the work: RICHARD HUGHES-JONES Richard gained his 1st class honours BSc in Physics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Particle Physics in 1972. He then collaborated on 5 international experiments at the particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva, including the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, working on real-time Data Acquisition and Network projects with both technical and collaborative rolls.

He also led the e-science Grid Network Research and Development in the Particle Physics group at Manchester University. As well as investigating real-time use of the network, this focused on applications of Gigabit and multi-Gigabit Ethernet, network performance, protocol performance, application gateways, Grid and remote computing farms. He was responsible for the high performance, high throughput network investigations in the European Union DataGrid and DataTAG projects and the UK e-Science MB-NG, and GridPP, projects. He was a co-PI of the UK e-Science ESLEA project focusing on delivering high performance networking using switched light-paths to science users including Radio Astronomy Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI), High Energy Particle Physics as well as other e-Science users. He was also a leading member of the EU EXPReS project working on protocols and high-bandwidth network performance over multi-gigabit lightpaths for future VLBI. He has supervised many masters and PhD projects and acted as external examiner for 4 PhD students. Richard joined DANTE in January 2008 as Technical Customer Support manager, taking on the role of helping existing and emerging user communities to get the best out of the network, and also continues as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Richard is an area director for infrastructure in the Open Grid Forum standards organisation and a co-chair of the Network Measurements Working Group. He is also a co-chair or TNC member of the annual international workshops “Protocols For Long Distance Networks” from 2005 to 2009. He is a program committee member of the IEEE Real Time Conferences. He has recently been a chapter coordinator and contributor to the book “Grid Networks: Enabling Grids with Advanced Communication Technology” published by Wiley. He has been responsible for the design and implementation of several live network demonstrations including the VLBI proof of concept at iGRID2002; the Radio Astronomy stand at the DANTE booth at the European Commission conference to mark the launch of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme in Brussels in 2002 and at the launch of GEANT2 Launch Event in June 2005. He organised and managed the transatlantic networking contributions to the international collaborations that won the SuperComputing Bandwidth Challenges for 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Metsähovi Radio Observatory of Helsinki University of Technology TKK is a long time partner in the EVN and has been participating in VLBI observations since 1991. Metsähovi operates a 14-m mm-wave radio telescope and is a specialist in mm-VLBI and geodetic e-VLBI. Since the early 1990's it has been one of the few institutes in the world where VLBI data acquisition systems have been actively constructed and developed further. Recent and future developments have concentrated on maximizing the applicability of Commercially Available Off-the-Shelf (COTS) technology for multi-gigabit VLBI data acquisition and storage applications. As a partner in industry space technology projects as well as ESA Planck and NASA AMS-02, Metsähovi is an active expert in several networking, computing, VLBI hardware, and data processing projects.

Ari Mujunen is a software engineer at Metsähovi Radio Observatory. He has a M.Sc. in EE from Helsinki University of Technology (1992) with software engineering and production as the major subject. Prior joining MRO in 1992 he has worked for commercial software houses creating software production toolsets for both CAD and business database applications. At MRO, he has written software and created electronic designs for the in-house telescope control and single-dish data acquisition system. For the 1998 STS-91 space shuttle AMS mission MRO was responsible for the ground segment of AMS HRDL (High-Rate Data Link) for which Ari Mujunen wrote the autonomous Linux-based data acquisition software package.

Jouko Ritakari is a hardware engineer at Metsähovi Radio Observatory. He has a M.Sc. in EE from Helsinki University of Technology (1980) with hardware engineering and data communications as the major subject. Prior joining MRO in 1987 he has worked for Nokia Corporation developing data communication protocols. He has also experience in designing data communication networks, he has designed several of the largest private networks in Finland. At MRO, he has developed hardware and firmware for high-speed data acquisition systems. 1995-1998 he designed hardware for data capture from the AMS-01 instrument in space and participated in testing and controlling the instrument. 2000-2002 he developed the very high speed data acquisition board VSIB (speed 512 Mbps) and the universal converter VSIC. 2002-2004 he made several data acquisition speed records together with Ari Mujunen. 2004-2007 New high-speed UDP-based Internet protocol research, several Internet speed records. 2007: Participated in a project to port the DiFX correlator to the Cell processor. 2008-present: Continuing protocol research together with Jan Wagner and Guifré Molera Calves, replacing typical very computing-intensive implementations of 10 Gbps Ethernet with a hardware-based UDP/IP packetizer that has zero CPU load.

Jan Wagner is a researcher at Metsähovi Radio Observatory. He has a M.Sc. in Electronics Engineering from Helsinki University of Technology (2007) with Space Technology and Computational Engineering as the major subjects. He has a B.Sc. in Information Technology from Helsinki University (2009). Before joining the MRO team in 2006 he has worked in the embedded computing and electronics industry and at IBM and CERN. Working from previous MRO team achievements, his first task was to revolutionize geodetic VLBI with production real-time e-VLBI data transfer. Together with J. Ritakari he created the worlds fastest VLBI correlator based on IBM Cell platforms and designed real-time GPU-based adaptive optics control systems for future telescopes. He designed 10GbE hardware UDP/IP data streaming for 8Gbps eVLBI using FPGA hardware, together with high-speed data acquisition systems, leading to transfer speed world records in 2008. Currently he pursues VLBI HPC computational tasks in ESA/JIVE ExoMars and planetary water detection projects with G. Molera Calvés, researching cluster computing for VLBI correlation with A. Mujunen and actively developing our post-10Gbps VLBI data acquisition systems and software together with long-haul UDP/IP networking protocol research for international 10G links.

Mr. Guifré Molera Calvés has been working as a researcher at Metsähovi Radio Observatory since 2006. He has a M.Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering from Technical University of Catalonia, UPC (2006) with Space Technology as his speciality. During this time he has been an active collaborator in international projects as the AMS-02, EXPReS and the upcoming ESA/JIVE ExoMars and PRIDE projects. He has acquired strong experience in high performance computing architectures, software development, FPGA-based designs, networking protocols, and astronomical data analysis. Currently he is writing his PhD thesis, focused on planetary spectroscopy with VLBI equipment and high-accuracy spacecraft tracking with single dish observations.

The Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) − recognized as one of the first three universities to be promoted as one of the top universities in Germany for graduate schools, clusters of excellence and institutional strategies for universities – covers a large spectrum of fundamental and applied research with studies ranging from engineering, natural sciences, including life and medical sciences, to economics. Responsible for this project is the Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodasie (FESG), a research institution in the Faculty of Civil Engineering of TUM and founded in 1983. FESG runs the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell together with the Bundesamt fuer Kartographie und Geodaesie. Specifically, FESG assumes responsibility for operating the Wettzell 20m VLBI telescope for geodetic applications since 1983, participating in regular daily and hourly geodetic observation sessions every week. Beside the strong involvement in VLBI observations FESG is active in precise GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) applications, including precise orbit modeling, Satellite Laser Ranging, and Earth rotation studies using the worldwide largest laser gyroscope in Wettzell. The FESG is embedded in the Forschungsgruppe Satellitengeodaesie (FGS), a consortium of five leading geodetic institutions in Germany.

Dr. Alexander Neidhardt Geodätisches Observatorium Wettzell, Sackenrieder Straße 25, 93444 Bad Kötzting, http://www.iapg.bv.tum.de, neidhardt@fs.wettzell.de
Current position: Head of the radio telescope group, research scientist and software engineer at Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodaesie (FESG), Geodätisches Observatorium Wettzell, TUM, Germany.
Field of work: Applied computer science for space geodesy. Development of modern, automatic measuring control systems for the geodetic space techniques, especially in combination with the development project of a new satellite laser ranging system at the Geodetic Observatory Wettzell. Improvement of data management systems with hybrid and middleware systems.
Biography:
1994-1998 Study of computer science at the university of applied sciences Regensburg/Germany (diploma); student assistant as laser ranging operator and software engineer at the Fundamentalstation Wettzell
1998-2001 Study of computer science at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg/Germany (diploma); student assistant as software engineer at the Fundamentalstation Wettzell and graduand at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits Erlangen with the domain of automatic code generation in combination with hardware-software-co-design
2001-2005 Doctoral thesis (PhD) as research scientist and software engineer at the Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodaesie (FESG), Fundamentalstation Wettzell, TUM/Germany
Since 2005 Research scientist and software engineer for the development of a control system for the new, automatic satellite laser ranging system at the Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodaesie (FESG), Geodetic Observatory Wettzell, TUM
Since 2007 “Habilitation” (postdoctoral lecture qualification) at the Forschungseinrichtung Satellitengeodaesie (FESG), TUM
Since 2008 Head of the radio telescope group Wettzell
Related work: Responsible designer and developer of the control system for the new automated laser ranging system Wettzell, which is currently in the test phase; Design and development of a remote control extension to the NASA field system which is successfully tested with the radio telescopes Wettzell, TIGO Concepcion/Chile and GARS O’Higgins/Antarctica and which will become part of the official release of the coming field system versions (in parts with cooperation to the MPIfR Bonn)
Related Publications: Several publications about e-control/remote control in the proceedings of the latest ILRS General Meeting Poznan 2008, EVGA-Workshop Bordeaux 2009, e-VLBI Workshop Madrid 2009 and as co-author in other subjects like Schreiber, K. U.; et.al.: Altimetry and transponder ground simulation experiment; Planetary and Space Science, Vol. 57, Nr. 12, pp 1485-1490, Elsevier, ISSN 0032-0633, DOI: 10.1016/j.pss.2009.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is Australia's organisation, employing more than six thousand staff in many divisions. The Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) is a division of CSIRO that specialises in research and technological developments in radio astronomy. The ATNF operates as open access national facilities the Parkes 64m telescope, the Mopra 22m antenna and the 6 x 22m antennas of the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). The ATNF also heads the Australian bid to host the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the next generation radio astronomy instrument. ATNF is building the 36 x 12m Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) and developing new and innovative technologies for the SKA.

The ATNF also operates a VLBI array, the Long Baseline Array (LBA), which utilises all the ATNF antennas and other telescopes in Australia, such as the Hobart and Ceduna antennas operated by the University of Tasmania and the NASA Tidbinbilla antennas. The VLBI data are correlated on a computer cluster operated by the Curtin University of Technology, utilising the DiFX software correlator developed at Swinburne University of Technology. The LBA is the only substantial VLBI array operating in the Southern Hemisphere.

The LBA partners also conduct a vigorous research and development program in e-VLBI, in partnership with the Australian NREN AARNet. Recent developments include: connecting the ATNF antennas via 2 x 1 Gbps links; there are 3 computer clusters that operate as DiFX software correlators; recorded VLBI data is also electronically transferred via a petabyte store operated by ARCS (government funded agency); operating e-VLBI and recording in parallel. The ATNF and AARNet were also key participants in the EXPReS project. So, the ATNF and its LBA partners are already committed to e-VLBI research and ideally suited to complement the activities in Europe planned for NEXPReS.

Dr Tasso Tzioumis is the leader of the e-VLBI project and the VLBI operations coordinator in ATNF. He has been involved in VLBI research for more than 25 years and his scientific research interests range from AGN to X-ray binaries and Supernovae. He is also a trained electrical engineer and is involved in technology developments for radio astronomy, as well as international involvement in the IAU, URSI and ITU. Dr Tzioumis chaired the EXPReS board for the last 18 months and will be coordinating the Australian contributions to NEXPReS .

Dr Chris Phillips heads all technical developments of e-VLBI in Australia. His research interests are mainly in spectral-line observations of masers and massive star formation. He has wide international expereince and spent 5 years working at JIVE. He is the main architect of the LBA Data Recorder (LBADR) and all software developments specific to e-VLBI, and will be the main technical person for the Australian NEXPReS participation.

Dr Shaun Amy has research interests in supernovae and it is the key networking person at ATNF. He plays a key role in all network operations and developments and has been a key person for the e-VLBI project. In collaboration with AARNet he will handle all the necessary networking developments for NEXPReS in Australia. Prof Steven Tingay heads a growing radio astronomy group at Curtin University of Technology. His group at Swinburne developed the original DiFX software correlator and he has continued to support research and development in e-VLBI and software correlators. He has very wide research interests from AGN to pulsars and he is a key person in developments for ASKAP and MWA. Prof Tingay and his group will be the key contributors from Australia to NEXPReS WP7 “Computing in a Shared Infrastructure”.