IVOA Theory Interest Group

[Lemson Gerard]

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