SCIENTIFIC APPLICATION PORTAL DEVELOPMENT FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATION IN CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

In recent years, the Internet has become an integral resource in the classrooms and homes of teachers and students. Widespread Web-access to data and analysis tools enhances opportunities for teaching and learning using cyberinfrastructure. The concept of cyberinfrastructure encompasses advanced scientific computing as well as a more comprehensive infrastructure for research and education based upon distributed, federated networks of computers, data collections, information resources, on-line instruments, visualization analysis and human interfaces. Science communities are increasingly becoming dependent upon such cyberinfrastrcuture for their research. In order to effectively train future scientists to make use of today's cyberinfrastructure, educators must embrace the same technologies. Portals or science gateways provide tools to end users for online collaborations, access to computing resources and ability to launch computational tasks, and sharing of data and other resources with others in a given community. The accessibility of Web interfaces means that now students in a variety of locations and with a variety of backgrounds can all make use of advanced cyberinfrastructure. Enhancing portals designed for high end science so that they are suitable in a variety of education settings is a major contribution to workforce development.

The US NSF-funded GEON Project (www.geongrid.org) is an open collaborative project that is developing cyberinfrastructure for integration of 3 and 4 dimensional earth science data. The focus is on building data-sharing frameworks, developing tools and services, and identifying best practices with the objective of dramatically advancing geoscience research and education. These developments in infrastructure seek to extend the access to data and to complex modeling tools from the hands of a few researchers to a much broader set of users. The GEON SYNSEIS (SYNthetic SEISmogram) application, for example, provides an easy-to-use interactive data access and computational environment, utilizing resources in the TeraGrid, or with the GEONgrid, to study the 3D lithospheric structure. It enables users to access the IRIS data archives from an interactive map interface and retrieve earthquakes, seismic stations, and corresponding seismic waveforms data. A 3D crustal structure model is then obtained from a different web service. The user defines earthquake source parameters and then generates a synthetic seismogram using validated software running on a remote supercomputer.

To support classroom use of this tool, we have developed a class account management system that instructors can use to easily create group accounts. Our goal is to combine Web 2.0 concepts with conventional cyberinfrastructure to realize the promise of creating virtual scientific and education communities. In this presentation, we will describe how the myProjects collaboration tools available in the GEON Portal can be utilized, along with tagging, to allow users to review and vote on submitted contents, including parameter settings and job outputs, and support group discussions among the class. The sharing of such information can potentially avoid unnecessary execution of computationally expensive codes, and provide a more effective way of pruning the space of possible solutions. As the use of collaboration tools and cyberinfrastructure matures, tools such as this will have the potential for significant impact on education and research.

The TeraGrid has recently launched the “TeraGrid Pathways” initiative. The goal of the initiative is to broaden the use of the very high end computing, data and visualization resources provided by the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure. One component of this initiative is the adaptation of Science Gateways for use by educators. GEON has been selected to serve as a prototype in this work. The work will focus on the extension of GEON's educational tools for use at the community college level. There are many underserved communities who use community colleges as a springboard to higher education. The geosciences present tangible, visual concepts that lend themselves well to a variety of educational settings. In addition, the Native American population, through tribal colleges, has expressed interest in using science gateways for education on remote reservations. These connections will be pursued through the work with GEON.