EU KnowARC project was initiated by researchers in Experimental High Energy Physics division of Lund University back in 2005. The project ran in 2006-2009 as an international effort dedicated to development of innovative software for distributed computing. It transformed Grid technologies as implemented in the ARC middleware (developed by the NorduGrid Collaboration) to a next generation middleware. KnowARC successfully achieved its goal by further developing ARC, making it a standard-complying, widely accepted middleware, used by researchers and other communities in need of massive computational resources.

Our division takes very active part in development of Grid technologies since 2000, when it became clear that modern High Energy Physics (HEP) projects can not succeed without very substantial computational and data storage faclities. Distributed nature of HEP activities worldwide makes Grid a natural choice. Researchers from our division took part in the CERN-lead EU DataGrid (EDG) project, and in 2001 together with colleagues from other HEP groups in Nordic universities co-initiated the NorduGrid project, that transformed into an international collaboration in 2003. Creation of the KnowARC project was the logical step in deveopment of the ARC middleware, at the time when formal technology standards started to emerge.

The KnowARC team in Lund consists of five researchers: Prof. Paula Eerola, Dr. Johan Jönemo, Dr. Balázs Kónya, Dr. Ulf Mjörnmark and Dr. Oxana Smirnova. Dr. Kónya is KnowARC Project Leader, carrying the task of coordinating research work. There are possibilities to carry out student projects related to Grid computing in High Energy Physics.

Our goal is to contribute to timely delivery of the new Grid middleware, capable of meeting demands of various user groups, and specifically the ATLAS and ALICE experiments at CERN, of which our division is a member.