EAGER: The Xpert Network: Synergizing National Expert-Assistance and Tool-Support Teams for Computational and Data-Intensive Science

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

Today's science frontiers are being advanced, to an increasing degree, by researchers who use large amounts of computational power to simulate models of our world's processes and to analyze large volumes of observed and collected data. Doing so requires expertise not only in the involved domain sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology, but also in the computational tools that implement the needed simulation and data analysis methods. Many research projects have recognized the importance of pairing domain scientists with computational experts. While the domain scientists pursue their individual research objectives, there is much commonality is the supporting software and hardware methods as well as in the needed cyberinfrastructure tools and resources. This project aims to increase the productivity of the many computational support teams - referred to as Xperts - through (i) the exchange of best practices and discussion of open problems, and (ii) the provision of advanced programming support environments. To achieve the first objective - creating synergy among Xpert teams - this award will engage computational experts from some of the large, national cyberinfrastructure projects, including XSEDE and the NSF Software Institutes, as well as from university campus efforts that have recognized the value of computational research support teams. Events for exchanging best practices and discussing open issues will be organized at special workshops, through online meetings, and at established annual symposia, such as the Supercomputing and PEARC conferences. The same gatherings will be used to bring together users and developers of programming environments, pursuing the second objective. Among these groups are those who develop automatic, and semi-automatic program optimization instruments, performance analysis environments, and data management tools. This effort will not only expose Xpert teams to today's advanced programming support environments, but also gather important feedback from key user groups - those who push today's science frontiers - to help advance the programming environments. 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.