ABSTRACT

This project is a collaboration between the University of California San Diego and Yale University to develop a science gateway for the computational neuroscience community. A gateway such as this helps improve our understanding of how the brain works by making it easier for neuroscientists to use complex digital models of brain cells and circuits in their research. Powerful software has been developed for building and using models, and on-line resources such as Open Source Brain (OSB), ModelDB, Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF), and OpenWorm have been created to help neuroscientists find existing models, collaborate in developing new ones, and share the results of their work with others. However, models are becoming too complex for the computer hardware that is available to most neuroscientists, resulting in a critical need to use high performance computing resources (HPC). This work extends an existing Neuroscience Gateway (NSG), which was developed with support from NSF to eliminate or reduce many of the technical and administrative difficulties that previously limited neuroscientists' access to HPC (http://www.nsgportal.org/). That said, NSG users must still log in, upload models, launch simulations, and download results--a process that involves many time-consuming, error-prone steps. The expanded NSG-R will eliminate these steps by enabling on-demand, automated communication between itself and familiar working environments including resources like OSB and others mentioned above, and even with neural simulation software running on neuroscientists' own laptop and desktop computers.

This seamless access to HPC is implemented in NSG-R by a software infrastructure that uses REpresentational State Transfer ("REST", the R in NSG-R). NSG-R utilizes set of web services which expose the capabilities of NSG for access via publicly available application programmer interfaces. This will allow users of neuroscience resources such as OSB, ModelDB, NIF and OpenWorm to readily access HPC from their respective websites via NSG-R. This enhances the usefulness of NSG-R, other neuroscience resources like OSB, and widely used neural simulators such as NEURON, GENESIS, PyNN, NEST, Brian and MOOSE. It also results in greater research productivity and enables wider use of large scale computational modeling by scientists and students. NSG-R will accelerate progress in brain science, and have far-reaching beneficial effects on related fields such as robotics and engineering of adaptive and learning systems. It will widen opportunities for educational and career advancement in neuroscience and engineering. Furthermore, by removing barriers that traditionally have limited access to HPC, NSG-R levels the playing field for all students and researchers regardless of their institutional affiliation. NSG-R, a free and open neuroscience gateway infrastructure, will naturally be a ready entry point for students and researchers from historically underrepresented schools and colleges. NSG-R workshops will be hosted at minority serving institutions (MSI) and opportunities for students to do internships with the NSG-R team at the University of California San Diego will be provided.

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