Posted August 31, 2011

Project Summary

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.

How these particular areas were chosen

These areas have been selected through mutual agreement with program managers at National Natural Science Foundation China (NSFC) in Beijing. NSFC has also already selected a preliminary group of 14 Chinese researchers to participate in the workshop series, should this proposal be funded. Using experience from the ongoing PRAGMA collaboration, mutual interest must be augmented with co-funding through peer-reviewed grants to insure a successful collaboration. PRAGMA also taught us that participants in a first workshop are much more apt to follow through on “homework”
assignments if they know a subsequent workshop is already planned.

Success of this activity is defined as submission of one or more, collaborative, multiyear, international research proposals to NSF and NSFC by (subsets of) participants from each of the focus areas. The first workshop is planned in Beijing for September 2011, the second in San Diego in the first quarter of 2012. Funding is requested for travel for all US invitees (15 researchers for the first workshop, 30 for the second), workshop expenses for the second workshop, administrative and coordination salary support for organizers and travel for some US researchers to make in-depth technical explorations with potential, new colleagues between workshops.

The intellectual merit of this activity is to determine through practicum if we can accelerate the formation of substantive, bi-lateral, peer-reviewed research programs. The broader impact will be to open the door, widely, to US-China collaborations in some critical areas of software. The transformative impact will be a model in which other international research collaborations in cyberinfrastructure can be practically realized to break down significant barriers between researchers in the world’s two largest economies.

This project is supported by National Science Foundation, USA (award# 1140394) and by National Natural Science Foundation of China.