I-Corps: nanoHUB platform for STEM research, education, and collaboration

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is twofold: it lowers cost and knowledge barriers for smaller companies and startups which need to run scientific simulations, and it reduces time to market for product design firms by allowing faster, more integrated access to simulation tools and data. This project provides an end-to-end, user-oriented, cloud computing infrastructure that embraces the needs of all three critically involved stakeholders: users, model/tool providers, and computational resource providers. The cloud model has proved to be a cost effective, reliable solution to many information service challenges, and a cloud-based platform for scientific simulation and computation has the potential to impact the high-tech community by inducing a fundamental shift in the way scientific simulation and data are used. Small companies, especially emerging startups, need not invest in simulation software, but instead can utilize an extensive simulation ecosystem for product design. Companies with access to this platform will become less restricted by local computational resources, and more productive with a larger suite of simulation tools to solve design problems. This I-Corps project is based on a comprehensive infrastructure to host and execute scientific simulations and store and access the output data with ease. With multiple simulation codes available in one place, workflows can be created which use the output of one tool to provide input to the next. This modular approach enables users to combine different tools and customize the workflow to their own needs. Simulation outputs are all stored and the resulting scientific data can be mined for knowledge. User actions are also recorded and analyzed to enhance the user experience. Through customer discovery activities within I-Corps and continued requirements gathering from existing and potential communities, this cloud-based simulation platform will potentially change how researchers, students, educators, and industry practitioners engage with simulation and data on a day-to-day basis.