The Grid Computing Environment (GCE) Research Group is aimed at contributing to the coherence and interoperability of frameworks, portals, PSE's, and other Grid-based computing environments and Grid services. We will do this by evaluating and testing protocols, API's and SDK's from "best practices" projects that are required to integrate technology implementations and solutions. A GCE covers both the tools and the technologies needed to construct environments such as:

• Portals: users, application, education, web, other
• Problem Solving Environments

Our function is to perform research on how developers are using the Grid and it's services, and by using a task-oriented approach to extract out functionality, API's, and protocols and to facilitate interoperability between users of the Grid and developers of the Grid based on what can be done today and what can/should be done in with next generation of software. Our information will have a bi-directional flow between service working groups and those that sit at "higher" levels of the 3-tier Grid architecture.

Our research would be expected to produce recommendations to GGF for possible standards. Our process will consist of: meetings and workshops, ad-hoc testbed, demonstration activities at SC, GGF and other conferences; targeted groups of papers. Our deliverables will consist of papers, publications, documents, sharing of research software via papers and web sites, collaborations on projects.