IVOA Theory Interest Group

During the last IVOA executive meeting, the IVOA Theory Interest Group was formed with the goal of ensuring that theoretical data and services are taken into account in the IVOA standards process. In a whitepaper published on the IVOA site (see
http://www.ivoa.net/pub/papers/TheoryInTheVO.pdf) issues specific to theory are discussed. The document also summarizes tasks that a possible theory working group should accomplish, listed here as a proposed charter for the group.

The IVOA Theory Interest Group will:
- Provide a forum for discussing theory specific issues in a VO context.

• Contribute to other IVOA working groups to ensure that theory specific requirements are included.
• Incorporate standard approaches defined in these groups when designing and implementing services on theoretical archives.
• Define standard services relevant for theoretical archives.
• Define relevant milestones and assign specific tasks to interested parties.

In the short term, we plan to define a roadmap for activities over the remainder of this year, hopefully including proposals for implementing theory specific demonstrations to be delivered early 2005. This roadmap will be discussed and finalized at the next interoperability meeting in Cambridge, MA.

Please subscribe to the Theory mailing list at http://www.ivoa.net/forum/ if you are interested in contributing to this group. A Twiki page has been made available at http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaTheory. Please also inform theorists whom you think may be interested in contributing to this effort. We are planning to have a section of the Twiki pages reserved for a registry of existing and planned VO-like theory efforts and would welcome links to such sites.

Regards,

Gerard Lemson Received on 2004-04-21Z09:50:53