Cyberinfrastructure runs the gamut - from computing, networks, data stores, instruments, observatories, and sensors, to software and application codes - and promises to enable research at unprecedented scales, complexity, resolution, and accuracy. However, it is the research community that must make sense of all the data being amassed, so the SAGEnext (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) framework is an innovative user-centered platform that connects people to their data and colleagues, locally and remotely, via tiled display walls, creating a portal, or wide-aperture "digital lens," with which to view their data and one another. It enables Cyber-Mashups, or the ability to juxtapose and integrate information from multiple sources in a variety of resolutions, as easily as the Web makes access to lower-resolution images today.
SAGEnext expands on a vibrant partnership among national and international universities, supercomputer centers, government laboratories and industry; 100 institutions worldwide use the current version of SAGE. For computational scientists, from such diverse fields as biology, earth science, genomics, or physics, SAGEnext will transform the way they manage the scale and complexity of their data. For computer scientists, SAGEnext is a platform for conducting research in human-computer interaction, cloud computing, and advanced networking. SAGEnext capabilities, integrating visualization application codes, cloud documents, stereo 3D, and new user-interaction paradigms, is unprecedented and heretofore not available, and will have a transformative effect on data exploration and collaboration, making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end users, in both the laboratory and in the classroom. SAGEnext, integrated with advanced cyberinfrastructure tools, will transform the way today's scientists and future scientists manage the scale and complexity of their data, enabling them to more rapidly address problems of national priority - such as global climate change or homeland security - which benefits all mankind. These same tools can better communicate scientific concepts to public policy and government officials, and via museum exhibitions, to the general public.
