| NSF Org: |
CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | February 3, 2022 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | February 3, 2022 |
| Award Number: | 2216851 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Almadena Chtchelkanova
achtchel@nsf.gov (703)292-7498 CCF Division of Computing and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2021 |
| End Date: | October 31, 2023 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $164,500.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $164,500.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
809 S MARSHFIELD AVE M/C 551 CHICAGO IL US 60612-4305 (312)996-2862 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
IL US 60612-4305 |
| 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): |
CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE, Software & Hardware Foundation |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| 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 complexity of research topics, research environments, and lab instruments has majorly grown in the last 20 years and has led to an uptake of computational methods such as computational workflows. Thousands of researchers use workflows for creating and analyzing data from a diverse set of research domains and the uptake of workflows for research is also reflected in a high number of mature workflow management systems with different strengths and foci. Workflows have been instrumental in enabling significant discoveries such as the gravitational waves from colliding black holes and the analyses of DNA from Next-Generation Sequencing technologies. While workflows constitute a research domain in their own right and lead to improvements such as efficiency, feature enhancement, and usability, workflows are inherently designed to serve other domains. The creation of workflows supporting a research topic requires an understanding of the targeted problem and can be a labor-intensive and error-prone process. One source of errors is the communication between domain researchers and workflow providers. Successful communication considers diverse aspects such as the scientific background, native language, home country, and culture of the researchers. While the agreement on one natural language for communication - or involving a translator - is the typical set-up communication, there is a lack of tools or translators for communication between research domains and computer science. VisDict is intended to fill this gap by providing a set of vocabularies in a science gateway to enhance communication. The goal is to present a definition for different domains and workflow providers and, thus, serve as source for terms. Adding visualization will lower the communication barrier further following the saying, ?A picture is worth a thousand words.?
The main goal for VisDict is to create an intuitive visual dictionary that translates terms and concepts between research domains and computer science, specifically computational workflows. A key component of the proposed work is the development of a visual dictionary - VisDict - instantiated as a science gateway that is based on the science gateway framework HUBzero and aimed at providing a knowledge map of terms across disciplines. To accomplish this innovative and transformative goal, the project is conducting a series of surveys and interactions with workflow systems researchers and developers, and researchers from the science and engineering communities. The project is applying semantic representation to create knowledge between different domains to make it seamlessly available to researchers and thus fill the gap in this area. The visualization is intended to enhance understanding, and users are be able to vote on definitions and figures to allow for a wide adoption of the dictionary in diverse communities. By lowering the communication barrier for workflow design and development activities between computer scientists and domain scientists, this project has the potential to significantly enhance and accelerate scientific progress of critical importance for the development and sustainability of society. While the project starts with two communities - physics and ecology - the concept can be applied to any research domain with subject-specific language.
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.
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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.
Thousands of researchers rely on scientific workflows for managing analyses, simulations, and other computations in almost every scientific domain. Scientific workflows have underpinned some of the most significant discoveries of the last decade, including the first detection of gravitational waves from colliding black holes, the discovery of the Higgs boson, analyses of DNA from Next-Generation Sequencing technologies, and drug design, among others.
Despite impressive achievements to date, the designing and development of scientific workflow applications is a labor-intensive and error-prone process that requires several interactions between workflow providers and domain scientists. A key challenge is to establish an effective and clear communication channel between them. Typically, most of the time is spent on translating domain-specific concepts into requirements and objectives. The project VisDict addresses these topics to lower the communications barriers between domain scientists and workflow technology providers via a visual dictionary. The goal is that the dictionary defines terms for different domains and illustrates them via pictures for each domain.
The major activities of the project included
- Curating an initial set of example terms for the visual dictionary, showcasing the diversity of perspectives.
- Designing and prototyping an open-source toolbox for data capture and analysis of text in research papers.
- Streamlining the search for suitable visualizations using various image search features.
- Creating a survey for voting on visualizations, involving face-to-face meetings and focus groups for refinement.
The concept of the visual dictionary has been deemed beneficial for collaborations by participants in the study. By lowering the communication barrier for workflow design and development activities between computer scientists and domain scientists, a visual dictionary has the potential to significantly enhance and accelerate scientific progress of critical importance for the development and sustainability of our society. We have started with the two research domains physics and biology and the computer science domain for workflow terms. The concept is also applicable to further research domains and technical areas.
Cross-disciplinary research and understanding is a crucial topic not only in research but also in teaching and for learners in acquiring skills. The findings of VisDict can be applied in education - higher education and K12 - to improve the communication between different areas of expertise. The concept of translations between different expertise areas is transformational for many disciplines, e.g., marketing and food supply or health and transportation.
The curation of a visual dictionary has proven to be much more time-intensive than anticipated and that it needs more AI methods to become an efficient service. We envision that the curation in a follow-up project makes use of tools like ChatGPT and AI Image Generators.
Last Modified: 03/21/2024
Modified by: Sandra Gesing
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