| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 20, 2012 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | July 8, 2019 |
| Award Number: | 1234983 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Kevin Thompson
kthompso@nsf.gov (703)292-4220 OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2012 |
| End Date: | September 30, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $5,693,064.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $6,466,479.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2013 = $18,833.00 FY 2015 = $200,000.00 FY 2018 = $554,582.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
9500 GILMAN DR LA JOLLA CA US 92093-0021 (858)534-4896 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla CA US 92093-0407 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Cross-BIO Activities, NEON-Concept & Development, Info Integration & Informatics, International Res Ret Connect, Science Across Virtual Instits |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001314DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001516DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), which began as a workshop series, explores the technical, organizational, and trust dimensions that enable small-to-medium-sized international networks of research scientists to address common scientific questions.
This award uses international scientific expeditions to forge teams of domain scientists and cyberinfrastructure researchers. Together, they develop and test the underlying technologies that are needed to create usable, international-scale, cyber environments. This award includes not only technology developers but also domain scientists in lake ecology, biodiversity and computer-aided drug discovery. In technology development, the award will: rebuild PRAGMA's technical infrastructure as a multi-provider/multi-institution cloud with a unique control approach; test and develop new analysis and provenance tools to track how data are utilized by the expeditions; enhance data sharing with user-controlled trust envelopes enabled by IPv4 and IPv6 overlay networks; and advance sensor network cyberinfrastructure. Education and training programs will be dramatically expanded through an international student association. New collaborations with a refined focus on common questions that affect India, China, and Southeast Asia will be developed as expeditions. This award broadens engagement of US researchers through a partnership that includes: University of Florida, Indiana University, University of Wisconsin, and led by the University of California, San Diego.
PRAGMA complements key international research network activities and large-scale production resources. It leverages significant investments in people, expertise, tools and infrastructure made by international members.
The intellectual merit is developing practical approaches to enable groups to collaborate through the cyberinfrastructure. The broader impacts are to fundamentally enable large numbers of small groups to work together on scientific problems where international perspective is essential; better inform the US research community of tools and experts out-side of the US; and create professional networks for the next generation of students. The transformational impact will be a model for building people networks to conduct science across international boundaries.
This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) and is being co-funded by NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Directorate for Biological Sciences; Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering; and Office of International Science and Engineering.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) is a grass-roots international community of practice founded in 2002 (see 2017 Concurrency Computat: Pract Exper journal article). PRAGMA's mission is to enable the long tail of science through scientific expeditions and infrastructure experimentation for Pacific Rim institutions and researchers. PRAGMA is an international-scale organization, a technology development and testing vehicle, and a venue for training the next-generation of researchers who can operate in an international collaborative environment.
During this award, PRAGMA built itself around a model of scientific expeditions. Expeditions focused on specific domains of science that have unmet international infrastructure needs. An expedition was formed when both scientists and informational technology specialists were identified and willing to engage for long periods of time to address questions in the science domain. This included the following expeditions:
Limnology Lake Ecology: The goal of the Limnology Lake Ecology Expedition was to advance the current understanding of the effects of climate change and eutrophication on harmful algal blooms in lakes. This was an interdisciplinary collaboration between computer scientists and lake modelers affiliated with the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON). The GLEON Research And PRAGMA Lake Expedition (GRAPLE) team advanced state-of-the-art water quality prediction through the use of models. Its main software product was GRAPLEr, an R-based open-source software that brings the power of distributed computing to the fingertips of lake ecology modelers. One of the underlying technologies of GRAPLEr is overlay virtual networks, which are managed by UF's IPOP software. The lessons learned from this successful expedition were also captured and published in a 2019 Ecosphere journal article. At the end of this award, the GRAPLE team continues to collaborate under awards #1737424 and #1933016.
Virtual Biodiversity: Lifemapper, an open-source modeling environment created at the University of Kansas, allows researchers to pursue species distribution and macroecological modeling for biogeographic and biodiversity analyses of terrestrial species. The Virtual Biodiversity Expedition (VBE) utilized unique Lifemapper installations for PRAGMA sites using species occurrence data of local interest or specified by a researcher, and phylogenetic (evolutionary) data derived from DNA sequencing studies to explain the ecological and evolutionary contributions to observed spatial patterns of species diversity. Work under this award enabled Lifemapper to more efficiently utilize all available resources from small virtual cluster installations for individual researchers to the XSEDE Comet (see 2017 Concurrency Computat: Pract Exper journal article). The Lifemapper toolkit is designed to work with Rocks clusters so that it can be installed in different computational environments. Lifemapper software improvements over the course of this award have allowed researchers to consider increasing the scale of problems being addressed and have facilitated collaborative macroecological research and training and visual exploration.
Experimental Networking: The goal of the PRAGMA Experimental Network Testbed (PRAGMA-ENT) expedition was to develop an international software-defined networking (SDN)/OpenFlow testbed and experiment with and evaluate new ideas without the concerns of interfering with a production network. PRAGMA-ENT also provided networking support to the PRAGMA multi-cloud and user-defined trust envelopes. At the end of the project, PRAGMA-ENT supported nineteen peer reviewed publications.
Twice-yearly workshops served as time synchronization for all members. These crucial two-day meetings summarized past effort, set goals for the following six months, and provided the critical shoulder-to-shoulder time for people separated by many time zones to address issues. They also provided international training opportunities for students. PRAGMA Students was formed in 2012 with the goal to help students gain opportunities for professional experiences within PRAGMA's trusted social and technical networks. As a student organization inside PRAGMA, the group is led by a student committee and advised by senior PRAGMA researchers. Activities of PRAGMA Students have included organizing PRAGMA-affiliated student workshops and poster sessions as part of the biannual PRAGMA Workshops; and developing a unique model to provide multiple opportunities for students to participate in PRAGMA's collaborative scientific research. PRAGMA provides a trusted people network and opportunities in leadership that helps students gain valuable professional experience.
Last Modified: 05/23/2021
Modified by: Shava Smallen
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