Markus Lorch

"My Ph.D. research was to be on grid workflows, and I discovered security issues in that area," said Lorch. "GGF funded me to attend their second meeting as a student, and I eventually chaired their authorization frameworks and mechanisms working group."

Lorch's interest in grid security led him to develop the PRIMA security software and implement it on the Virginia Tech campus grid. In 2003, close to finishing his degree, Lorch started searching for an application area-and funding-for his security software. He found willing partners in Fermilab and the Open Science Grid. Fermilab hired him as a postdoctoral researcher based in Virginia, where he worked on security software for the lab, and the OSG authorization framework based on PRIMA and the Grid User Management System.

"What the OSG has now that it didn't have before are roles," said Lorch. "We enabled the compute resources, OSG's gatekeepers, to use GUMS as an online credential mapping service. There is a site-wide service now instead of separate gridmap files on every machine that need to be kept updated and in sync. This allows one person to be in multiple virtual organizations and have multiple roles, such as an administrator or a researcher. Before this would have required multiple credentials, something that is not easy to administer. There's still much more work to be done in this field, but this is a good step forward."

In 2005, Lorch accepted a position with IBM Boeblingen Lab in Germany, and he and his family moved to the suburbs of Stuttgart. Although he has backed away from grid computing temporarily, now working in the area of data management for distributed software systems, Lorch fully expects to return to the world of grids in the future.