Increasingly science and engineering research occurs in large-scale, distributed, interdisciplinary, cyber-enabled teams engaging challenges that are too large and complex to be addressed by a single investigator. The research will improve our understanding of the management practices being used by this novel form of scientific exploration and whether these practices are consistent with those recommended by existing research on organizational design, project and process management, software development and the social studies of science. The study includes in-depth interviews yielding a detailed description of a wide range of cyberscience and engineering centers, a workshop to integrate empirical findings with current managerial practice, a survey to validate the interview findings and assess needs, and a set of guidelines and support materials for current and future center managers, program officers, and reviewers of these endeavors.
This project studies how large scale cyber-enabled science and engineering centers can be successfully designed and managed. Where current practices could be better, this project will develop guidelines and materials to support their improvement. Investigating cyberscience and engineering design and management practices and developing materials for their improvement is a crucial step in learning how to build and nurture the research centers that will be central to future advances in science and engineering. Identifying the best practices for large-scale centers could potentially transform cyber-enabled grand challenge communities, radically improve their success, and guide future development of appropriate cyberinfrastructure tools. This is an important topic of national concern in areas such as global healthcare, disaster response and climate change. In addition, cyberinfrastructure can enable participants from under-represented groups and minority institutions to join scientific and engineering teams.
Objectives for the project involved exploring management practices at computationally-intensive research centers, and then generating knowledge from this exploration that might inform and improve the way in which large-scale, distributed science and cyberinfrastructure enterprises are managed. To do this there we conducted 83 interviews with leaders of science and cyberinfrastructure enterprises, and administered two surveys of the Coalition of Academic Scientific Computing on their management practices. Research has resulted in 15 research reports and 30 presentations by the research team at academic conferences, workshops, universities, and science & cyberinfrastructure enterprises. Further, this research has sprouted four different translational efforts where the lessons from organizational science can be bridged to cyberinfrastructure enterprises of all sorts. These four efforts involve (1) a Research Coordination Network of science and cyberinfrastructure leaders collaborate with organization scientists; (2) a pilot in "science executive" education that adapts a business-school model of executive education for science and cyberinfrastructure leaders; (3) an on-line set of resources and tools to aid in both the practice and the study of virtual organizations; and (4) annual center management benchmarks for the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computing (CASC). One of the key findings from this research involves the development of a framework for leaders of science and cyberinfrastructure enterprises for understanding and communicating the value that they bring to the variety of stakeholders with which they interact. Throughout the interviews we found that one of the biggest struggles that these leaders have involves communicating just how valuable they are their funders, universities, localities, and other stakeholders. Along with this framework we have developed some novel approaches to thinking about the value such enterprises bring – including the visualization of the "diaspora" from their enterprises to show how they are upskilling the very top end of knowledge workers in their region and in the country. We also have a variety of research findings that contribute to research on the leadership of distributed science and cyberinfrastructure enterprises, particularly with respect to the digital infrastructures that undergird contemporary scientific activity. We have identified the interplay of different modes of managerial attention and their importance to sustained enterprise success. We have also explored the way the "computing" identity of managers is brought to bear in bringing about the widespread changes to scientific activity. Other key contributions involve articulating the role of organizations in scientific activity as "stewards" of a knowledge domain across projects, and characterizing the interplay of resource scarcity and resource abundance in bringing about a variety of innovative outcomes.
