Cyberinfrastructure is an idea that has emerged over the past decade or so from some basic Cyberinfrastructure in Action technological realities: To iron out many of the technical wrinkles, the The Internet has become far more than an e- computer science community is mail carrier; collaborating with many Microchip technology is filling our homes, our potential beneficiaries in the scientific cars, and even our pockets with ever-shrinking community and beyond to develop a computing devices; and number of ongoing NSF-supported Databases are piling up information faster than cyberinfrastructure projects. Here are anyone can make sense of it all. just a few: The convergence of these and other trends have Extensible Terascale Facility: This led researchers to envision a tightly integrated, NSF-supported collaboration, planet-wide grid of computing, information, commonly called the TeraGrid, is a networking and sensor resources--a grid that we multi-year effort to prototype a widely could one day tap as easily as we now use a shared, comprehensive power socket or a water faucet. cyberinfrastructure for academic research and education. That analogy is the source of the name, “cyber- infrastructure,” and is quite apt. Modern Networked Infomechanical researchers are coming to depend on Systems: In NIMS, robotic cyberinfrastructure, even in its current embryonic sensors suspended from a form, in much the same way that modern society network of cables move relies on its physical infrastructure to provide themselves around to monitor, for This animation depicts a hypothetical electricity, water, telephones and roads. In many example, a mountain stream researcher using a well-established disciplines, moreover, the results promise to be as ecosystem from the ground to the cyberinfrastructure to apply the power of revolutionary as the coming of water and electric treetops. the world's highest-performance digital power was for our cities. resources Virus War Games: The DETER project allows researchers to study Credit: Animation by Nicolle Rager, With a well-established cyberinfrastructure, National Science Foundation. individual researchers will have the power of the cybersecurity issues for Internet Simulation Image by John Dubinski, world's highest-performance digital resources at infrastructure and develop defense Department of Astronomy and their disposal. And teams of researchers will mechanisms in a controlled Astrophysics and Canadian Institute for attempt to answer questions that had previously environment. Theoretical Astrophysics, University of been unapproachable because the requirements Toronto. Data, Tools, Community: Unidata Telescope Image by Todd Boroson, were too much, too hard, too long or too complex. NOAO/AURA/NSF provides software infrastructure, data "New instrumentation, data-handling and services and collaboration technologies computation capabilities will expand the horizons as part of building a community for of what scientists can study and understand," said acquiring, organizing and using Margaret Leinen, head of NSF's Geosciences geoscience and geographic data. directorate. "Cyberinfrastructure is empowering a new generation of researchers in their quest to Essential Privacy: Because of the unravel how the world around us works." proliferation of online sensitive data, the PORTIA project focuses on the In environmental science for example, technical challenges of handling cyberinfrastructure combines computing, sensitive data and the policy and legal information management, networking and issues facing data subjects, owners and intelligent sensing systems into powerful tools for users. investigating the natural world and the human- Crisis Response: Project RESCUE is HPWREN's relay on Palomar Mountain, built environment. The full complexity of the with smoke from the July 2003 Coyote environment, from the molecular scale to the transforming the way responding wildfire rising in the distance. The planetary, requires collecting and analyzing large organizations gather, manage, use and HPWREN team established a wireless volumes of data, performing experiments with disseminate information within network link to the California computer models and bringing together emergency response networks and to Department of Forestry and Fire the general public. Protection's operations camp for fighting collaborators from many disciplines. For example, the Coyote fire in northeastern San as part of cyberinfrastructure, large-scale sensor Diego County. networks or experimental instruments could feed Wireless Without Limits: real-time data streams into vast data grids where The HPWREN and ROADnet Credit: High Performance Wireless they can be funneled directly into ongoing projects extend wireless Research and Education Network research and education ()HPWREN computational simulations or shared as a community resource. networks to remote astronomy observatories, Indian reservations and Nearly all scientific disciplines grapple with similar even ocean-going vessels. challenges in managing and analyzing vast amounts of data and complex processes across many scales. "The emerging cyberinfrastructure that NSF supports is a product of the scientific community's demands for and reliance on information and communications technologies," said Peter Freeman, head of NSF's Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate. Cyberinfrastructure has become a common theme throughout NSF, and every directorate has funded or is exploring cyberinfrastructure-related projects. The NSF's larger goal for a national cyberinfrastructure is to provide the information technology and knowledge management resources needed to tackle the problems at the frontiers of all science and engineering disciplines. By David Hart "[E]nvironments and organizations, enabled by cyberinfrastructure, are increasingly required to Grassroots Cyberinfrastructure address national and global priorities, such as understanding global climate change, protecting The demand for our natural environment, applying genomics- cyberinfrastructure has come proteomics to human health, maintaining national from research communities security, mastering the world of nanotechnology, that recognize the many ways and predicting and protecting against natural and it will allow them to push the scientific human disasters, as well as to address some of envelope. Here are a few of the our most fundamental intellectual questions such disciplines and NSF-supported projects as the formation of the universe and the in the grassroots drive for fundamental character of matter." cyberinfrastructure. That’s how the NSF Blue Ribbon Advisory Physics: The Grid Physics Network Committee in their report, Revolutionizing Science (GriPhyN ) and the international Virtual and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure, Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL ) are summarized the scientific need for advancing data-intensive science for cyberinfrastructure. The new capabilities are physics, cosmology and astrophysics. "essential, not optional, to the aspirations of research communities," the report states. Geoscience: EarthScope is investigating the evolution of the North In the very near future, cyberinfrastructure will American continent and the permit better forecasts of when and where processescontrolling earthquakes and earthquakes are likely to occur and how the volcanic eruptions. The Geosciences ground will shake as a result. Robotic sensors will Network (GEON ) is integrating data, monitor ecosystem health or track pollutants in computation and software to weave urban watersheds. Astronomers will mine for data together Earth sciences data and as often as they peer into the heavens. disciplines. For scientists and engineers, according to the Astronomy: The National report, cyberinfrastructure has the potential to Virtual Observatory (NVO ) is "revolutionize what they can do, how they do it, creating standards and high- and who participates." The seeds of this revolution performance computing tools Deep within an active fault zone, are seen in community-driven efforts, supported for astronomical data collections that EarthScope's San Andreas Fault by NSF and other agencies, such as the Network will make data easier to use, find and Observatory at Depth will measure for Earthquake Engineering Simulations (NEES), join with other data. changes in rock properties before, during and after earthquakes. Linked to the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN) and the National Virtual Observatory (NVO). Engineering: The shake tables, reaction other EarthScope measurements at the wall facilities, geotechnical centrifuges, surface, these direct observations will for the first time, monitor how an active "Extensive grassroots activity by the scientific and tsunami wave tanks and mobile field fault and its environment respond to engineering research community is creating and equipment of the George E. Brown Jr. regional and local changes in stress. using cyberinfrastructure to empower the next Network for Earthquake Engineering Recorded over a decade, this wave of discovery," said Dan Atkins of the Simulation (NEES ) are being integrated combination of measurements will through the NEESgrid. provide important new insights on University of Michigan, chair of the advisory earthquake nucleation and rupture. committee. "We're at a threshold where technology allows people, information, Meteorology: The Linked Environments Credit: EarthScope computational tools and research instruments to for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD ) be connected