Fundamental and applied research has undergone a revolution in the last twenty years. With few exceptions, multi-investigator teams with a diversity of expertise are now required to efficiently attack increasingly complex fundamental questions and processes. Moreover, scientists can no longer work in isolation because many local questions have become global questions.
Furthermore, nearly every scientific domain today is dependent upon reliable and scalable cyberinfrastructure (computing, networks, data, and software) for either support analysis or as primary tools in the research arsenal. With science transforming into a global enterprise, it becomes crystal clear that a significant fraction of such infrastructure developed in one part of the world must fundamentally interoperate with elements created elsewhere. For example, how does a scientist in the United States collaborating with one in China gain meaningful access to meteorological, seismic, or ecological data in China. One must at least understand the structure of the data (syntax) and the meaning of the data (semantics). Language and policy are practical barriers, too. Effective interoperation of two or more independently-developed soft (cyber) infrastructures is truly a grand challenge.
Can Research Cyberinfrastructure Interoperate?
How does one insure interoperation of (research-grade) cyberfrastructure? Or, at least, improve the probability that interoperation is eventually possible? This workshop series is premised on the notion that before any such interoperation is possible, and well before any “standards” are set, scientists and infrastructure specialists must learn to work together to discover what questions need to be asked and then develop proof-of-principle solutions. Prior to those discussions, potential collaborators must be introduced to one other and be given the opportunity to find common areas of true collaboration. To accelerate this process of mutual interest/mutual benefit discovery, we are proposing a workshop series as a starting point for extended, bilateral US-Chinese scientific collaborations in three specific software areas: trustworthy software, extreme scale software, and architectures and processes for emerging infrastructure.