The Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA), which began as a workshop series, explores the technical, organizational, and trust dimensions that enable small-to-medium-sized international networks of research scientists to address common scientific questions.
This award uses international scientific expeditions to forge teams of domain scientists and cyberinfrastructure researchers. Together, they develop and test the underlying technologies that are needed to create usable, international-scale, cyber environments. This award includes not only technology developers but also domain scientists in lake ecology, biodiversity and computer-aided drug discovery. In technology development, the award will: rebuild PRAGMA's technical infrastructure as a multi-provider/multi-institution cloud with a unique control approach; test and develop new analysis and provenance tools to track how data are utilized by the expeditions; enhance data sharing with user-controlled trust envelopes enabled by IPv4 and IPv6 overlay networks; and advance sensor network cyberinfrastructure. Education and training programs will be dramatically expanded through an international student association. New collaborations with a refined focus on common questions that affect India, China, and Southeast Asia will be developed as expeditions. This award broadens engagement of US researchers through a partnership that includes: University of Florida, Indiana University, University of Wisconsin, and led by the University of California, San Diego.
PRAGMA complements key international research network activities and large-scale production resources. It leverages significant investments in people, expertise, tools and infrastructure made by international members.
The intellectual merit is developing practical approaches to enable groups to collaborate through the cyberinfrastructure. The broader impacts are to fundamentally enable large numbers of small groups to work together on scientific problems where international perspective is essential; better inform the US research community of tools and experts out-side of the US; and create professional networks for the next generation of students. The transformational impact will be a model for building people networks to conduct science across international boundaries.
This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) and is being co-funded by NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure; Directorate for Biological Sciences; Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering; and Office of International Science and Engineering.
