| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 12, 2020 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | January 16, 2024 |
| Award Number: | 2029261 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing 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: | September 1, 2020 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2024 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,775,372.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,775,372.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2021 = $559,682.00 FY 2022 = $548,451.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
104 AIRPORT DR STE 2200 CHAPEL HILL NC US 27599-5023 (919)966-3411 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
102 Airport Drive Chapel Hill NC US 27599-1350 |
| 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): | International Res Ret Connect |
| Primary Program Source: |
01002122DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): | |
| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
Global science relies on robust, interconnected components - computers, storage, networks and the software that ties them together - collectively called the scientific cyberinfrastructure (CI). Improvements to individual components are made at varying paces, often creating bottlenecks in the flow of information - the scientific workflow - and slowing down scientific discovery. FABRIC Across Borders (FAB) enables domain scientists and CI experts to jointly develop a more tightly integrated, flexible, intelligent, easily programmable workflow that takes advantage of rapid changes in technology to improve global science collaboration. FAB enables domain scientists to perform global, end-to-end experimentation of new CI workflow ideas on a platform with one of a kind capabilities. The project expands the NSF-funded FABRIC testbed to encompass four additional, International locations, creating an interconnected resource on which an initial set of scientists from High Energy Physics (HEP), Astronomy, Cosmology, Weather, Urban Science and Computer Science work with cyberinfrastructure experts to conduct cyberinfrastructure experiments. In addition to domain scientists, FAB collaborates in the area of Internet freedom and maintains strong partnerships with human rights groups, which serve to expand the results beyond domain sciences.
FABRIC nodes contain programmable networking hardware, storage, CPUs and GPUs, measurement devices and software in a single, integrated rack. FAB enables placement of four additional nodes in partner data centers in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Bristol and the particle physics lab CERN in Geneva and connects them via NSF-funded International networks, on which it?s possible to conduct experiments without impacting production science. FAB offers programmable peering with production networks and specialized testbeds, allowing experimenter topologies to be joined with production networks, vastly expanding the possibilities for the types of resources and users that can utilize the infrastructure. FAB creates new software services and tools for researchers at the facilities, and interfaces with existing and evolving data delivery services to efficiently move and process scientific data globally and test novel data analysis approaches that scale to massive volumes. Metrics of success are driven by the science experiments themselves: more efficient handling of both high energy physics data from CERN experiments to worldwide collaborators and Cosmic Microwave Background data collected in South America and the South Pole; successful proofs of concept for the sharing of Smart City sensor data for urban planning as well as the establishment of global, private 5G networks. All software associated with FAB will be open source and posted in a publicly available repository: https://github.com/fabric-testbed/
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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 FABRIC Across Borders (FAB) project expanded the reach and user base of the FABRIC systems and network testbed. FABRIC hardware and network connections were installed at four international locations, Bristol, Switzerland (CERN), Amsterdam, and Tokyo, enabling multiple scientific communities to test novel cyberinfrastructure enhancements for improved global science collaborations. This includes testing future Internet architectures, distributed protocols and applications, efficient big-data transfer, machine learning and AI applications, and prototyping CI solutions for future scientific facilities and instruments.
The intellectual merit of this project lies in empowering domain scientists to explore more efficient uses of supporting cyberinfrastructure to help their science discoveries. We worked with astrophysicists at CMB-S4, the next-generation ground-based cosmic microwave background experiment, to help them design the prototype of an experiment on FAB to simulate data reduction and transient event detection for faster feedback to the observing telescopes. Science partners from the CERN ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experimented with data delivery improvements in anticipation of the high luminosity upgrade to the LHC. Weather researchers from the University of Miami used FAB to investigate more efficient climate data analysis workflows, facilitating faster detection of adverse weather events. Network researchers at University of Kentucky worked with researchers in Europe on the development of a spot-market for network transit service. A spot market can facilitate the real-time buying and selling of network bandwidth and services and optimize resource allocation and pricing. Wireless researchers at the University of Tokyo’s 5G Research Lab conducted 5G slicing and security experiments to enable long distance data transmissions.
FAB enabled work on the development of new methods to evade Internet censorship, which is especially vital in countries that restrict Internet freedoms of their citizens. The project P2PR2P, a private encrypted resource distribution tool, successfully used FAB for experimentation and has made impacts in multiple regions across the globe in delivering resources to civil society in conflict zones.
FAB serves educational users, both faculty and students, at multiple universities in the EU, including being used as part of coursework. A team of student interns is used to help test the portal and software components of FABRIC. The team includes undergraduate, Masters, and Ph.D. students from three universities: Clemson, University of Kentucky, and North Carolina State University. This team is designed to help test and improve FABRIC’s user-facing interfaces while providing students with the opportunity to learn about the purpose and capabilities of FAB.
Last Modified: 12/30/2024
Modified by: Paul Ruth
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