Web and e-Science

The Network Institute's Centre for Web and e-Science studies, develops, and applies such new shared computational tools and infrastructures to support scientists in doing research in an increasingly networked environment. Since its emergence, modern science has been characterized by close collaboration and exchange within an international network of scientists. Due to the digitization of and easy access to scientific publications, the advent of the World Wide Web has further increased the size and density of this network. In effect, the Web has functioned as a "science accelerator".

However, ICT does not just accelerate science as is. It changes the way scientists do research. In many scientific fields large amounts of empirical and experimental data are collected, and they need to be stored, organized, processed, and shared. Sophisticated theories and models to interpret and explain the data are increasingly computer-based. For analysis, design, scenario simulation, prediction generation, etcetera, powerful computational resources are required - and these resources can be made globally available with the help of the Net. It is noteworthy that, beyond many applications in the natural sciences, especially the social sciences and humanities stand to benefit from these developments.