Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association GRENA

The Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association GRENA was founded on July 26, 1999 for the development of Information Technologies (IT) in education and research. The founders of association GRENA are five universities, Georgian National Academy of Sciences and Open Society Georgia Foundation.

The main fields of GRENA activities are the following:

  • Providing Information Technology services to users and implementation of new, innovative services;
  • IT education;
  • Preparation and implementation of research and technology projects;
  • Providing software products and cyber security solutions to customers;
  • Promoting and supporting IT development in Georgia.

Implementation of new services and development of projects in Information Technologies is being carried out in close cooperation with universities with the support of the European Commission, NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme, Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation, Open Society Georgia Foundation, International Science & Technology Center and other organisations.

Several projects of GRENA supporting open science in Georgia are following:

●      European Commission HORIZON 2020 Programme

Proposal title: EGI-ACE: Advanced Computing for EOSC

Duration: 01/01/2021-30/06/2023 (30 Months)

EGI-ACE’s main goal is to implement the compute platform of the European Open Science Cloud and contribute to the EOSC Data Commons by delivering integrated computing platforms, data spaces and tools as an integrated solution that is aligned with major European cloud federation projects and HPC initiatives.

The specific objectives are the following:

  • Deliver the EOSC Compute Platform and expand the supply-side;
  • Contribute to the implementation of the EU Data Strategy and the EOSC Data Commons to support the green deal, health, fundamental research and social sciences and humanities;
  • Integrate the EOSC Compute Platform with the EOSC Portal and the EOSC Core;
  • Contribute to the realisation of a global open science cloud;
  • Expand the demand-side of EOSC across sectors and disciplines.

●      European Commission HORIZON 2020 Programme

Proposal title: National Initiatives for Open Science in Europe (NI4OS-Europe)

Duration: 01/09/2019-28/02/2023 (42 Months)

The objective of the project is to support the development and inclusion of the national Open Science Cloud initiatives in 15 Member States and Associated Countries in the overall scheme of EOSC governance; spread the EOSC and FAIR principles in the community and train it; and provide technical and policy support in on-boarding of the existing and future service providers into EOSC, including generic services (compute, data storage, data management), thematic services, repositories and data sets – thus covering the whole spectrum of services related to Open Science, data and publications.

With the support of the Association, the following resources were integrated into EOSC:

  • GRENA GCould infrastructure as a service platform with a wide range application https://www.gcloud.ge/
  • Ivane Beritashvili Experimental Biomedicine Center Electroencephalography sample study https://eeghub.ge/
  • National ScienceLibrary of Georgia of Tbilisi State University, repository of digital Georgian scientific works https://openscience.ge is registered in OpenDOAR and registration is in progress in OpenAIRE

Other EOSC related activities of the association are following:

  • GRENA provides GCould resources to the EU research community
  • R. Kvatadze is a member of EOSC TF Financial Sustainability
  • The organisation makes presentations at various conferences and seminars
Georgian Research and Educational Networking Association GRENAGeorgia