Sustaining: A Bridge to Sustainability for the CIPRES Science Gateway

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award to the University of California - San Diego will sustain the online presence of the Cyberinfrastructure for Phylogenetic Research (CIPRES) Science Gateway, an internet site that allows scientists from around the world to make discoveries more easily through access to community software for analyzing complex phylogenetic questions run on large NSF-funded compute clusters. Currently at least 12,000 scientists run tens of thousands of jobs each year using the CIPRES Gateway; these jobs are an essential part of making new scientific discoveries about the natural world and the origin of life on Earth. In the past year at least 1,800 scientific studies were published using results made possible by CIPRES. All of these studies would have been more difficult or even impossible without the access to resources that CIPRES provides. CIPRES makes it possible for researchers who do not have access to large local/campus computing resources to ask large questions and conduct difficult investigations. It also makes it possible for more than 100 instructors each year to train the next generation of phylogenetics researchers, using the finest tools available in the world. The impact of CIPRES on basic biological research is significant. Assuming current trends continue, CIPRES will support 6,000+ studies during the award period. The access provided by CIPRES allowed scientists to quickly investigate the origin and distribution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, emphasizing the value of a resource like CIPRES when scientists need to respond rapidly to an unforeseen, time-sensitive research problem. During this award, the researchers will focus on changing the CIPRES Science Gateway from an NSF-funded resource to a user-funded resource. The goal of the project is to develop tools and strategies that make it possible to sustain the CIPRES Science Gateway indefinitely via revenues generated from the project’s users and sponsors. At present thousands of users access and run jobs at CIPRES each year as part of their scientific investigations into the evolution of life on Earth. Given that the resource has enduring value to its community, the researchers will develop revenue streams that will allow maintenance and preservation of the resource in perpetuity without additional funding from NSF or other federal agencies. The proposed activities include software maintenance and systems administration tasks that preserve the operational integrity of job submissions, results storage, and results retrieval via a web-based graphical user interface that supports submissions by individual users, and via a RESTful application programming interface that supports submissions by other science gateways and desktop applications that require phylogenetic analyses. Additional activities will include routine updating, benchmarking, and release of current and new community codes; usage monitoring to ensure efficient and prudent use of NSF resources by the user community; user support; adjustments and bug fixes based on feedback from users; and reporting progress. 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.