The Science Gateways Community Institute

Speaker:

Nancy Wilkins-Diehr,  Co-Principal Director,  XSEDE at San Diego Supercomputer Center

Abstract:

Science gateways, also known as web portals or virtual research environments, are a fundamental part of today’s research landscape.

Beginning in 2013, more users accessed XSEDE resources via gateways than they did from the command line.

However, despite the presence of gateways for many years, development of these environments is often done with an ad hoc process, limiting success, resource efficiency, and long-term impact.

Developers are often unaware that others have solved similar challenges before, and they do not know where to turn for advice or expertise. Without knowledge of what's possible, projects waste money and time implementing the most basic functions rather than the value-added features for their unique audience.

Critically, also many gateway efforts fail. Some fail early by not understanding how to build communities of users; others fail later by not developing plans for sustainability. 

The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) is the first implementation-phase software institute to be awarded through NSF’s Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program.

SGCI has been designed as a service organisation to address challenges by offering services to and building community among the research communities developing gateways. The Institute’s five-component design is the result of several years of studies, including many focus groups and a 5,000-person survey of the research community.

This talk will provide an overview of SGCI’s offerings and describe international collaborations, including the International Coalition on Science Gateways and two International Workshop on Science Gateways series.

Bio:

Nancy is a co-principal investigator on several National Science Foundation awards — XSEDE, CyberGIS and the Science Gateways Institute. Nancy co-directs the Extended Collaborative Support program in XSEDE.

She has been with the San Diego Supercomputer Center since 1993 and has held a variety of management positions there. Prior to that she held engineering positions with General Atomics and General Dynamics in San Diego.

Nancy received her Bachelor's degree from Boston College in Mathematics and Philosophy and her Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from San Diego State University.