XROADS: Driving the Next Generation of Scientific Discovery Technical Report: Survey of cyberinfrastructure needs and interests of NSF-funded principal investigators Craig A. Stewart1, Pervasive Technology Institute, Indiana University Daniel S. Katz2, Computation Institute, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory David L. Hart3, National Center for Atmospheric Research Dale Lantrip4, Pervasive Technology Institute, Indiana University D. Scott McCaulay5, Pervasive Technology Institute, Indiana University Richard L. Moore6, San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego XROADS is a collaborative effort that responded to the TeraGrid Phase III: eXtreme Digital solicitation (NSF solicitation 08-571 http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08571/nsf08571.htm) under planning grant 0928542 funded by the National Science Foundation. XROADS partners include University of California San Diego, University of California Berkeley, University of Chicago/Argonne National Laboratory, Clemson University, University of Delaware, Elizabeth City State University, University of Florida, Hispanic Association of Colleges & Universities, Indiana University, Internet2, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Purdue University, Raytheon, and Redelfs LLC. In addition to funding support from the NSF, additional support for this report was provided by the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute, or any of the organizations that are partner to the XROADS proposal. More information about the XROADS collaboration is available online at http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0928542 . Please cite as: Stewart, C.A., D.S. Katz, D.L. Hart, D. Lantrip, D.S. McCaulay and R.L. Moore. Technical Report: Survey of cyberinfrastructure needs and interests of NSF-funded principal investigators. 2011. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/9917 This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). This license includes the following terms: You are free to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work and to remix – to adapt the work under the following conditions: attribution – you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. This report was updated as of 7 February 2011 to reflect minor corrections in extrapolations to the population of NSF-funded researchers and include a statement of multiple interests by the report authors. 1 [email protected], Franklin Hall 116, 601 East Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington IN, 47405 2 [email protected], 5735 S. Ellis, Room 209, Chicago IL, 60637 3 [email protected], 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder CO, 80305 4 [email protected], 2719 E 10th Street, Bloomington IN, 47408 5 [email protected], 2719 E 10th Street, Bloomington IN, 47408 6 [email protected], MC 0505, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla CA, 92093-0505 Acknowledgments We would like to thank several people who provided critical input into the preparation of the survey or this report. Several people provided critical reviews of the survey instrument, including: Jill Gemmel, Clemson University and John Orcutt, University of California San Diego (UCSD). Critical reviews of the survey analysis and report were provided by Von Welch, of Von Welch Consulting; John Towns, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA); Warren Froelich, UCSD; and Ian Foster, Argonne National Labs. We thank particularly Nancy Bannister of the IU Center for Survey Research for her excellent work in developing and administering the survey. Thanks go to Malinda Lingwall, Indiana University, for excellent editorial work in finalizing this document. The Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute is supported by several sources, and thanks particularly the Lilly Endowment for its support. This report depends very much on the prior involvement of several XROADS partners in the TeraGrid, which has been funded in part by the NSF via the following grant awards: 0122272, 0451566, 0438741, 0503944, and 0910847 to UCSD; 0451237 and 0504075 to Indiana University; 0504086, 0503697, and 0742145 to the University of Chicago; and 0710874 to Louisiana State University; Any opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute, or any of the organizations that are partner to the XROADS proposal. Finally, and most particularly, we thank the hundreds of researchers who took time to complete the survey and thus make this report possible. ii Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary ...............................................................................................................................1 2 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................5 3 Methods ..................................................................................................................................................5 4 Results .....................................................................................................................................................7 4.1 Quantitative/categorical questions ....................................................................................................7 4.2 Free text (essay) response questions ...............................................................................................11 5 Comments of particular note drawn from free text questions ........................................................29 6 Discussion .............................................................................................................................................30 6.1 Quantitative/categorical questions response summary ...................................................................30 6.2 Free text (essay) questions ..............................................................................................................33 7 References .............................................................................................................................................38 8 Appendix 1. Letter of invitation to participate in survey and full survey instrument ..................40 9 Appendix 2. Details of extrapolations from quantitative/categorical questions 1 and 7 ...............51 10 Appendix 3. Responses to free text questions 1-13 ...........................................................................54 11 Appendix 4. Statement of multiple interests by report authors ......................................................93 Table of Figures Figure 3-1. TeraGrid account status of researchers funded by the NSF during 2005-2009. .........................6 Figure 4-1. Wordle from responses to free text question 1. .........................................................................12 Figure 4-2. Wordle from responses to free text question 2 ..........................................................................13 Figure 4-3. Wordle from responses to free text question 3. .........................................................................14 Figure 4-4. Wordle from responses to free text question 4. .........................................................................15 Figure 4-5. Wordle from responses to free text question 5 ..........................................................................17 Figure 4-6. Wordle from responses to free text question 6 ..........................................................................19 Figure 4-7. Wordle from responses to free text question 7. .........................................................................20 Figure 4-8. Wordle from responses to free text question 8. .........................................................................21 Figure 4-9. Wordle from responses to free text question 9. .........................................................................22 Figure 4-10. Wordle from responses to free text question 10. .....................................................................23 Figure 4-11. Wordle from responses to free text question 11. .....................................................................25 Figure 4-12. Wordle from responses to free text question 12. .....................................................................27 Figure 4-13. Wordle from responses to free text question 13 ......................................................................28 Figure 6-1. Responses to the question “Do you have adequate cyberinfrastructure resources to meet your research needs?” ...........................................................................................................31 Figure 8-1. Free text question 1 ...................................................................................................................45 Figure 8-2. Free text question 2 ...................................................................................................................45 Figure 8-3. Free text question