Established in 2002. The Belfast e-Science Centre (BeSC) is a regional centre of excellence focusing on Grid Technologies based within The Queen's University of Belfast (QUB). BeSC is one of eight regional e-Science Centres throughout the UK (Newcastle, Manchester, Cardiff, Cambridge, Oxford, Southampton and Imperial College London), with a National e-Science Centre based in Edinburgh.

As Grid technology is seen as the natural successor to the world wide web, the DTI and the Research Councils wants the UK to take a leading role in this emerging area of ICT. Through a £120M Government-Industry funded initiative, the e-Science programme wishes to develop solutions for its scientists and to foster novel e-Business opportunities for industry and commerce.

The BeSC collaborates with industrial partners to sponsor and manage a portfolio of e-science projects utilising Grid technology within Northern Ireland.

Following a start-up award to QUB of nearly £0.5M from the Government's e-Science core programme, the DTI has set aside an additional £1.0M that will be granted to grid technology e-Science projects where collaborating companies make matching contributions.

The main objectives of the BeSC are to:

• Act as a catalyst to promote rapid uptake of Grid technology within Northern Ireland.
• Undertake and sponsor (with matching contributions) flagship e-Science Industrial projects.
• Provide local Northern Ireland companies and other organizations with appropriate technical infrastructure and resources to support a range of e-Science activities.
• Provide specialist advice and consultancy to local universities, companies and other organizations interested in exploiting the potential power of the Grid.

the e-Science Core Programme (eSCP) and the DTI funded the establishment of a National e-Science Centre and eight regional e-Science Centres

Centre's History

• April - Centre secures just under £1 million of UK e-Science Core Programme platform grant funding . press release

• June - CRISP
• Jan - PRISM

• BeSC secures follow on funding from Phase 3 of the e-Science Core Programme (eSCP)

• Centre secures portfolio of EU FP6 projects including NextGRID, Grid-Coord amd CoreGrid

• GridIreland connection established with TCD, UCD, NUIG and NUIC.
• DTI funded collaboraive projects commence GridCast, GeneGrid, GEDDM and GridMIL

• BeSC secure over £2 million from DTI and commercial partners for multi-disiplinary collaborative e-Science projects.

• Centre secures start up funding of nearly £0.5 million from eSCP
• BeSC established as one of only eight regional e-Science Centres funded by the e-Science Core Programme (eSCP) and the DTI.