The Science Gateways and their Democratization and Acceleration of Science
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Abstract
As science today grows increasingly digital, it poses exciting challenges and opportunities for researchers. Whether it¹s streaming data from sensors, simulating the formation of tornadoes, annotating and sharing tagged audio and video data, or using geographic information systems to anticipate the spread of disease, the frontiers of transformative science are enormous and continue to grow. Many scientists are turning to web portals or science gateways to allow them to analyze, share, and understand large volumes of data more effectively. The existence of science gateways ‹ and the sophisticated cyberinfrastructure (CI) tools and resources behind these accessible web interfaces can significantly improve the productivity of researchers facing the most difficult challenges. Most important, science gateways can democratize access to the cyberinfrastructure that enables cutting edge science. Now the best minds can tackle today¹s most challenging science problems, regardless of institutional affiliation.
Science gateway developers face several challenges. They often work in isolation even though development can be quite similar across domain areas, they bridge local, campus, national and sometimes international cyberinfrastructure, they need foundational building blocks so they can focus on higher-level grand-challenge functionality. Sustainable funding for science gateways can also be difficult to secure as they span the worlds of research and infrastructure. Experiences from the 7-year TeraGrid Science Gateways program, continuing gateway activities in XSEDE and new efforts to form a Science Gateways Institute will be discussed.
Bio
Nancy Wilkins-Diehr holds a BA in mathematics and philosophy from Boston College and an MASc from San Diego State University in aerospace engineering. She has held engineering positions with General Dynamics and General Atomics in San Diego. Since 1993, she has held a variety of positions at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, including Associate Director of Scientific Computing and project manager for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI). She was the area director for the TeraGrid Science Gateways program from 2004-2011. Currently, Wilkins-Diehr co-directs NSF's XSEDE Extended Collaborative Support Services (ECSS) program and is a co-principal investigator on the XSEDE project. ECSS pairs members of the XSEDE user community with expert staff members for an extended period to work together to solve challenging science and engineering problems through the application of cyberinfrastructure. She is the PI on a new conceptualization grant through NSF's Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2) program to plan a Science Gateway Institute in collaboration with members of the HUBzero team and contributors from Elizabeth City State University, Indiana University, the University of Michigan and the University of Texas.