Advances in Cyberinfrastructure with a Focus on Data:

a U.S. National Science Foundation Overview

Alliance for Permanent Access to Records of Science in Europe Network “APA” Conference

ESA, ESRIN, Frascati Italy

6-7 November 2012

Carmen Huber

NSF Europe Office. chuber@nsf.gov

Robert Chadduck Office of Cyberinfrastructure, rchadduc@nsf.gov

The S&T Landscape in the U.S.A.• Many R&D performers and funders:

industry, federal and state governments, universities, non-profit organizations

• Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) coordination of federal investments

• Diversity and decentralization

complexity and variety of options

About The US National Science Foundation

• Independent Agency

• Supports basic research and education

• Funded by US Congress

• Low overhead; highly automated

• Uses grant mechanism

• Merit review process

• Awards to US institutions

• NSF operates no laboratories

• Annual budget ~ U$S 7 B

NSF ~19% of Total Federal Basic Research

NSF is main federal funder of basic research in many areas

NSF: Discipline-based structure and interdisciplinary funding mechanisms

To be part of Directorate for Computerand Information Sciences and Engineering

About the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI)

OCI coordinates and supports acquisition, development and provisioning of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools & services essential to the conduct of 21st century science and engineering research and education

Goals of NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure

• Contribute to development and deployment of comprehensive, integrated, sustainable, & secure cyberinfrastructure at the national & international scales

• Contribute clearly defined cyberinfrastructure benefits across multiple research disciplines

• Promote transition from basic research to effective practices

• Build on and extend existing cyberinfrastructure through an NSF-wide integrated portfolio of investments and activities

Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21)

• NSF-wide portfolio of activities to provide integrated cyber resources enabling new multidisciplinary research opportunities in all science and engineering fields by leveraging ongoing investments and using common approaches and components

• Cyberinfrastructure components and systems supported: - general systems (Blue Waters, Open Science Grid, …)- domain-specific systems (Nat. Ecological Observatory Network)- software (Globus, Pegassus, …)- networks (Global Environment for Networked Innovation-GENI, …)

- Data – NSF leads $200M Big Data US government initiative

http://www.nsf.gov/cif21

Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure Activity:

DataNets • Portfolio of early implementations and “proof of concepts”

data networks projects offering discipline-focused scientific communities suites of tools, capabilities, including training materials; responsive to data life cycle

• Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE), Terra Populus (TerraPop), Datanet Federation Consortium (DFC), Sustainable Environment - Actionable Data (“SEAD”)

• Others: iPlant, Tree of Life

Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure Activity:

EarthCube

• NSF-sponsored, multiple U.S. federal agencies participating – Towards a National data Infrastructure for Earth System Science

• novel approach actively promoting a series of ongoing engagements of multiple earth-centered science(s) communities with relevant technologists to create integrated infrastructure to transform the conduct of research within the geosciences for the purpose of accelerating our ability to understand and predict the Earth system

http://www.nsf.gov/geo/earthcube/

Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure Activity: Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (“DIBBs”)

• Developing data infrastructure usable by multiple scientific disciplines, fostering cross-community infrastructure developments addressing common science-driven problems while remaining responsive to differing scientific disciplinary requirements and priorities.

• 3 complementary types of support: conceptualization - promoting disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding

of data storage and management requirements and leading to new prototypes implementation – development and implementation of technologies addressing

data preservation and access lifecycle interoperability - providing design consistency or commonality across

communities and implementation for data acquisition, management, preservation, sharing, dissemination , etc.

• Solicitation NSF 12-557

Data Focused Cyberinfrastructure: Cyber-Enabled Sustainability Science and

Engineering - CyberSEES

• Cyber-Enabled Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (CyberSEES) aims to advance interdisciplinary research in which the science and engineering of sustainability are enabled by new advances in computing, and where computational innovation is grounded in the context of sustainability problems

• Solicitation NSF 13-500

Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure: Computational and Data-enabled Science & Engineering – CDSE – A new NSF program

• seeks to identify and capitalize on opportunities for major scientific & engineering breakthroughs through new computational and data analysis approaches

• intellectual drivers may be in an individual discipline or they may cut across more than one discipline

• research outcome relies on the development, adaptation, and utilization of one or more of the capabilities offered by advancement of both research and infrastructure in computation and data

• NSF Program PD 12-8084

Emerging Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure Activity:

DataWay

• DataWay will contribute to creating integrative data management infrastructure(s) for research across the sciences

• Within the science/technology synergy spectrum, DataWay will focus on technical developments originating from needs of the S&E community

http://www.nsf.gov/mps/dataway/dataway.jsp

Data-Focused Cyberinfrastructure:Research Data Alliance

• A research collaboration network with genesis in multi-national communities interests to accelerate international data-driven innovation and discovery by facilitating research data sharing and exchange, use and re-use, standards harmonization, etc.

• To be achieved through development and adoption of advanced infrastructure, policy, practice, standards.

• Co-supported by NSF, NIST; Australia; EU

• International planning meetings in Washington and Barcelona (10/2012 )

• To be formally launched in Gothenburg, March 2013

http://www.rd-alliance.org

Further Information:

Europe-based:Dr. Carmen Huber, Head

NSF Europe/Eurasia OfficeParis, France 

Tel:    +33-(0)1-43-12-71-71chuber@nsf.gov

U.S.-based:Robert Chadduck

Program Director, Data & CyberinfrastructureOffice of Cyberinfrastructure

Tel: +1-703-292-2247rchadduc@nsf.gov

www.nsf.gov