SEE-GRID-SCI (SEE-GRID eInfrastructure for regional eScience) is a 2 year project co-funded by the European Commission, starting on 1 May 2008. eInfrastructure in Europe has reached a mature state where the GÉANT network forms a communications backbone on top of which a distributed computing infrastructure – the Grid – provides processing and storage services for eScience research. The South-East European eInfrastructure initiatives are committed to ensuring equal participation of the less-resourced countries of the region in European trends. SEEREN initiative has established a regional network and its GÉANT connection and the SEE-GRID initiative the regional Grid.

SEE-GRID-SCI leverages the SEE eInfrastructure to enable new scientific collaborations among user communities and stimulates widespread eInfrastructure uptake by new user groups extending over the region, fostering collaboration and providing advanced capabilities to more researchers, with an emphasis on strategic groups in seismology, meteorology and environmental protection. The initiative thus aims to have a catalytic and structuring effect on target user communities that currently do not directly benefit from the available infrastructures.

In parallel, it aims to enlarge the regional eInfrastructure to cater for demands of the communities by increasing the computing and storage resources and involving new partner countries in the region.

Finally, SEE-GRID-SCI targets to help mature and stabilise the National Grid Initiatives in the region, allowing them to join the new era of longer-term sustainable Grid infrastructure in Europe.

In longer term, SEE-GRID-SCI aspires to contribute to the stabilisation and development of South-East Europe, by easing the digital divide and stimulating eInfrastructure development and adoption by new user communities, thus enabling collaborative high-quality research across target scientific fields.