The 2017 NSF Large Facilities Cyberinfrastructure Workshop was held at the Westin Alexandria in Alexandria, VA on September 6-7, 2017. The workshop was organized by a steering committee composed of experts from the facilities as well as from the CI community. Workshop attendance was by invitation, and consisted of 82 attendees including representatives from the NSF large facilities, the cyberinfrastructure (CI) community, and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The overarching goal of the workshop was to enable direct and synergistic interactions among the NSF large facilities and the CI communities to jointly address the CI needs as well as the sustainability of the CI of existing and future large facilities.

The workshop was preceded by a pre-workshop survey and the collection of white papers from the facilities. The 26 responses to the survey questionnaire as well as the 22 white papers were shared with the attendees prior to the workshop and made available to the general public though the workshop website. The workshop program was developed on the basis of the survey responses and was primarily composed of 4 panels focused on key crosscutting issues followed by breakout discussions on each panel topic.

The white papers and survey responses provide a wealth of information about facilities’ CI and its operation. An initial analysis of the white papers to identify crosscutting requirements and challenges, architectural patterns, effective practices, and opportunities for sharing interoperability was one of the post-workshop activities.

Overall, the workshop provided a unique forum for interaction and frank discussions between the facilities and CI communities on important issues related to the facilities’ CI, and was viewed as constructive by all participants. Workshop details as well as related material are available at http://facilitiesci.org/.

The key findings and corresponding recommended actions summarized below are synthesized by the steering committee from the pre-workshop survey responses, white papers, and discussions and feedback from the community before, during, and after the workshop, including the pre- and post-workshop surveys and workshop panels and breakouts. There was also an overall view among the participants that while this workshop was effective and resulted in useful discussions and insights, a longer term sustained activity that combines crosscutting as well as topic-focused discussions is needed to fully address the challenges and opportunities related to large facilities’ CI.

Key findings:

- The need for, and benefits of, close interactions, collaborations, and sharing among the facilities and with the CI communities are well recognized, including the sharing of CI- related expertise, technical solutions, best practices, and innovations across NSF large facilities as well as research facilities outside NSF (DOE, NIH, NASA, etc.).

- There is a lack of effective mechanisms and funding structures to support interactions and sharing among facilities regarding their CI. There is also a lack of a facilities’ CI community that can collectively address CI sustainability and help provide continuity between existing and future facilities.

- There is a need for, and a current lack of, easily accessible information about current CI technologies, solutions, practices, and experiences.

- There is a critical lack of a focused entity that could facilitate interactions and sharing across facilities. A model such as that used by the NSF-funded Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure (CTSC) was explicitly and repeatedly noted as an effective model that should be explored to address this gap.

- The constantly changing technology and CI landscape highlights the tradeoffs between longer stability and incorporating new and potentially more effective/efficient solutions. A crosscutting approach for addressing these tradeoffs is missing, as are mechanisms and funding for evolving/refactoring facilities’ CI.

- Workforce development, training, retention, career paths, and diversity are major crosscutting challenges that the community shares. They may be best addressed coherently across all facilities through a coordinated approach.

Recommended Actions:

- Foster the creation of a facilities’ CI community and establish mechanisms and resources to enable the community to interact, collaborate, and share.

- Support the creation of a curated portal and knowledge base to enable the discovery and sharing of CI-related challenges, technical solutions, innovations, best practices, personnel needs, etc., across facilities and beyond.

- Establish a center of excellence (following a model similar to the NSF-funded Center for Trustworthy Scientific Cyberinfrastructure, CTSC) as a resource providing expertise in CI technologies and best practices related to large-scale facilities as they conceptualize, start up, and operate.

- Establish structures and resources that bridge the facilities and that can strategically address workforce development, training, retention, career paths, and diversity, as well as the overall career paths for CI-related personnel.

Last Modified: 08/28/2018
Modified by: Ivan Rodero