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VRE-IG: Virtual Research Environments, Science Gateways and Virtual Labs

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VREs/Virtual Labs/Science Gateways: Visions for addressing barriers, needs and requirements for the next generation of VREs

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Sandra Gesing

sandra.gesing@nd.edu

17th RDA Plenary

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21 April 2021

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State of the Art in Research

Increased complexity of

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  • research questions
  • hardware
  • software
  • instruments
  • data volume
  • data formats

The need for end-to-end solutions for accessing data, software, computing services, and equipment specific to the needs of a science or engineering discipline

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VREs, Science Gateways, VLs

Increased complexity of

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  • research questions
  • hardware
  • software
  • instruments
  • data volume
  • data formats

The need for end-to-end solutions for accessing data, software, computing services, and equipment specific to the needs of a science or engineering discipline

VREs, Science Gateways, VLs!

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It’s a

Science

Gateway

It’s a Research

Portal

It’s a Collaboratory

It’s a

Cyber-

infrastructure

It’s

a Virtual Research

Environment

It’s a

Virtual

Lab

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VRE-IG Timeline

  • 16th Plenary IG: Good Practices for Communicating and Collaborating Effectively and Efficiently within Distributed Communities and Initiatives�BoF: Visions for Future Research Environments: Services, Processes and Policies (VFRE)
  • 15th Plenary IG:  Towards a common reference architecture for VREs
  • Community Calls in Jan/Feb 2020: Planning WGs/15th Plenary IG session
  • 14th Plenary IG:  Virtual Research Environments - Working towards building a common reference model and a catalogue of design patterns for VREs
  • 13th Plenary IG: Emergence of new concepts and technologies: do they improve sustainability and reproducibility in Virtual Research Environments? 
  • 12th Plenary IG: Transforming Data into Information, and Knowledge: The Role of Virtual Research Environments
  • 11th Plenary IG: Virtual Research Environments – How do I find them and what skills do I need to build and use them?
  • 10th Plenary IG: Understanding VREs/SGs/VLs: planning a roadmap for sustainable collaborative development
  • 9th Plenary IG: Virtual Research Environments: coordinating sustainable online research environments across multiple infrastructures
  • 8th Plenary IG: VREs/Virtual laboratories/science gateways: opportunities for developing a more coordinated approach to support interoperability across different systems
  • 7th Plenary BoF: Kick-Off Meeting to establish the Virtual Research Environment Interest Group

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VRE-IG Concept

VRE-IG

WG: “Dear colleague" letter/white paper addressed to funding bodies for requirements to make a vision for 10 years happen.�

Ongoing community effort

Open ended

WG?

WG?

WG?

WG?

WG?

WG?

WG: Interviews on

10 years vision

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VRE-IG Vision on VREs

Every technology we would like to use in 10 years,

we need to start to develop in the next 2-3 years

to be mature when we need it!

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VRE-IG Vision on VREs

  • Technical requirements for different frameworks/VREs under consideration of dashboards, notebooks and containers, e.g., aspects such as security, connectivity
  • Community requirements considering different roles in a VRE from researchers to stakeholders
  • Policy requirements considering rules and laws on research infrastructures, e.g. laws for health data
  • What will I as a researcher need to do high quality research efficiently 10 to 15 years from now?
  • What will society need to trust in and engage with research, contributing to and benefiting from it 10 to 15 years from now?
  • If you could have access to all the data you are interested in as well as the means to analyze them which questions would you look at: What kind of data, analysis and data comparisons would be possible and which technologies would we need for that?

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Thanks!

sandra.gesing@nd.edu

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https://rd-alliance.org/groups/vre-ig.html

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