Chemomentum

Grid Services based Environment to enable Innovative Research

To make Grids more useful for knowledge-oriented applications such as decision support systems and risk assessment, more effort in the areas of semantics, metadata and knowledge management in distributed, heterogeneous environments are needed.

The Chemomentum project aims to fill these gaps by taking up and enhancing the UNICORE Grid technology and applying it to real-world challenges in computational chemistry and related application areas. It will help drive the transformation of computing paradigms in these areas towards collaborative research and Grid computing. Specifically, the Chemomentum system including many applications will be used in the context of evaluation and risk assessment of chemicals: substances have to be carefully evaluated and assessed for possible risks to human health and the environment prior to marketing and distribution. This requires massive efforts in terms of time, money and testing animals. The Chemomentum system has the potential to boost time-effectiveness and reduce the need for animal testing in this area by providing powerful solutions for the computational, "in silico", testing of chemicals. This concretely supports the European REACH (Registration and evaluation of chemicals) initiatives aimed at optimizing risk assessment strategies.

The main objectives of Chemomentum are:

Provide an integrated Grid solution for workflow-centric, complex applications with a focus on data management and knowledge. Place the end users into the focus, enabling them to use powerful tools in a natural and transparent fashion;
Provide Grid-enabled applications, data services and knowledge management solutions, offering integrated decision support services for risk assessment, toxicity prediction and drug design;
Setup and operate a stable pilot installation, accessible for external users. Proactively gather and evaluate feedback from these users. Simplify administration and management of the Grid;
Spread awareness of the Chemomentum aims, scientific and technical approach, results and success stories in relevant industries and communities. Ensure maximum exploitation of the services and possible products developed in Chemomentum;
Test-drive the developed services in the context of the European regulatory initiative "Registration and Evaluation of Chemicals" (REACH), promoting the REACH initiative aimed at reducing animal testing, by developing in silico, Grid-based tools.

The Chemomentum Consortium contains nine partners from seven European countries (Poland, Germany, Estonia, UK, Italy, Switzerland, France):
Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling Warsaw University, Poland (Coordinator)
Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
University of Tartu, Estonia
Dresden University of Technology, Germany
University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, UK
Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche "Mario Negri", Italy
University of Zurich, Switzerland
Biochemics Consulting, France
TXT e-Solutions, Italy

The project is funded by the European Union (EU) under contract number IST-05-033437. The grant period is 01.07.2006 until 31.12.2008.

More information: Chemomentum project website