UNDERSTANDING THE

BIG PICTURE OF E-SCIENCE

Andrew Sallans

Head of Strategic Data Initiatives

University of Virginia Library

E-Science Bootcamp

Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, University of Virginia

4 March 2011

OUTLINE

What it‟s all about

Examples

Implications

UVA Libraries Response (Round 1)

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WHAT IT‟S ALL ABOUT (AROUND 1999)

"e-Science is about global collaboration in key areas

of science, and the next generation of

infrastructure that will enable it."

"e-Science will change the dynamic of the way

science is undertaken."

Dr Sir John Taylor

Director General of Research Councils,

Office of Science and Technology

United Kingdom3

Source: http://webscience.org/person/8.html

WHAT MADE THIS POSSIBLE?

Internet/World Wide Web

Faster networking (fiber, special research

networks, advances in grids)

Better storage (higher capacity, faster access,

better reliability)

Cheap storage (costs keep decreasing)

Major funding initiatives

Broader interest in collaboration

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SOME COMMON TERMS

Computational science

Scientific computing

Research computing

High-performance computing

Cyberscience

Cyberinfrastructure

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CLIMATOLOGY RESEARCH

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Sources:

1) Climate Simulation on Cray XT5 “Jaguar” supercomputer, ORNL

(http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v42_3_09/article02.shtml)

2) Cray XT5 “Jaguar” supercomputer, ORNL

(http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v42_1_09/images/a05_p04_xt5_full.jpg)

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER AT CERN

Circumference: 26,659 meters

Magnets: 9,300

Speed: protons move at

99.9999991% speed of light)

Collisions/second: 600 million

Data produced: equivalent to 100,000 dual layer DVDs per year

LHC Grid: tens of thousands of computers around the world used collectively to analyze data (will take 15 years)

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Source: CERN website (http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/975468/files/its-2006-003.gif?subformat=icon)

BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS GRID (CABIG)

Launched as test in 2004

Adopted by over 50 NCI-designated cancer centers

Focused on:

Connecting scientists and practitioners through a

shareable and interoperable infrastructure

Development of standard rules and a common

language to more easily share information

Building or adapting tools for collecting, analyzing,

integrating, and disseminating information associated

with cancer research and care

8Source: caBIG website, National Cancer Institute (https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/)

CITIZEN SCIENCE…THE SOCIAL SIDE

9Source: Zooniverse, Real Science Online (http://www.zooniverse.org/home)

34,617,406 clicks done by 82,931 users!

IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH

Greater emphasis on technology

Increase in interdisciplinary research and

collaboration

Often bigger data, with far more complex

associated issues (storage, access, expertise,

funding, preservation, etc.)

Need for innovative approaches and integration

into education/curriculum

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DATA TSUNAMI

11Source:

1) The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai. Found on Wikipedia.

2) The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe, IDC, May 2010 (http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-

reports/diverse-exploding-digital-universe.pdf)

IDC estimate of about 1.7 zetabytes (1 trillion terabytes) around 2011

….twice the available space

BUT, NOT ALL DATA IS EQUAL….

12Source: Long Tail, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail)

CASE STUDY: UVA LIBRARIES RESPONSE

(ROUND 1)

Collaboration established around 2005 through

discussions between ITC and Library, and

impetus of Frye Institute capstones.

Research Computing Support services in need of

greater visibility, Library seeking ways to

support changes in scientific research, collocation

provides mutual benefits.

In 2006, staff moved to Library locations

(Research Computing Lab & Scholars‟ Lab),

setup new service points and services.

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RESEARCH IN THE E-SCIENCE WORLD

Heavy use of electronic information resources

Work is predominantly done from a lab/office, not

in the Library

Collaboration is fundamental, but don‟t always

know people in other domains

Grad students are usually bringing new

technology/methods into the team (learning more

about grad students in a research study now)

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IDENTIFIED E-SCIENCE TRENDS

Various components

Computationally intensive science

IT/software/infrastructure

Collaboration

Data

Often intertwined with Open Access initiatives

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E-SCIENCE IN OTHER LIBRARIES

Purdue University

Focus on data curation

IATUL Conference, June 2010

University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign

Focus on data curation

Summer Institute on Data Curation

Cornell University

Metadata consulting services

University of New Mexico

Major DataONE grant

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Aiming to provide support across the entire

scientific research data lifecycle

Staff with expertise in:

Data

Quantitative data, statistics

Modeling, visualization

Scientific publishing

Emphasis on consulting, not drop-off services

Partnership with traditional librarians to help

ease transition to new support models

RESEARCH COMPUTING LAB RESPONSE

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RCL OUTREACH

University Community

Speaker series 2006, 2007, 2008

Research 2.0 Symposium

Partnerships with courses, other units (ie. MLBS)

Short course series each semester

Library Community

Panel at the ACCS Conference in 2007

Poster at ARL/CNI Forum in 2008

Poster at STS Section of ALA in 2009

Journal article in JLA in 200918

SAMPLE RCL CONSULTATIONS

STS Undergrad Environmental Justice (2008) Development of technology solutions for empowering the

citizen scientist

Web 2.0 tools, data collection/management

Data analysis

Economics Graduate Student (2008/2009) Airline flight price modeling

Screen scraping, data collection/management

Data analysis

Mountain Lake Beetle Project (2009) Mobile data acquisition/collection solution

Database development/management, programming

Data analysis

Archiving of dissertation data (2009) EVSC student, ModelMaker 4.0 data

Biology student, IDL, Matlab, R code 19

SPECIFICS FOR MEDICAL CENTER

At least 600 RCL support requests from Medical

Center from October „07 through December „09

Medical Center patrons are heavy users of

computational software like Matlab, SAS,

LabView

Increasing emphasis on collaboration

(translational research)

Greater attention to open access (NIH policy)

Growing interest in areas like image integrity

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TAKE-AWAYS

This is the future

Heavily growing space, lots of opportunity

Requires big investment and commitment, the

biggest being training and priority alignment

Libraries and institutions need to make decisions

on what to do and what not to do

It‟s a culture change for both libraries,

institutions, and researchers

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COMING LATER….(ROUND 2)

“Practical Applications of e-Science” in UVA

Libraries today

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QUESTIONS?

Please feel free to contact me with questions:

als9q@virginia.edu

434-243-2180

Twitter: asallans

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

E-Science Talking Points for ARL Deans and

Directors, Elisabeth Jones, University of

Washington, October 2008

(http://www.arl.org/rtl/escience/)

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