I was invited to briefly (15min) discuss what researchers need in terms of a national cyberinfrastructure strategy.

1. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
What researchers want?
Michel Dumontier
Associate Professor of Bioinformatics
Carleton University
Co-PI, C-BRASS NEP2

2. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
somebody who teaches courses, trains students
at the undergraduate, graduate and post-
graduate levels, writes grants, does research,
deals with the administration, writes and
publishes papers, and tries to have
some kind of life

3. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
we’re successfulwe’re successful
because of the helpbecause of the help
we get along the waywe get along the way

4. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
first, we all have different needs
second, the opinions expressed herein are
reflect mine and those I’ve heard in one-on-
one and group discussions

5. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
it’s not so much that there’s something
fundamentally wrong, it’s just that we can
do it better

6. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
we can build from a foundation of good
work and good intentions

7. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
but, we really need a vision we can believe in
government and funding
agencies that understand
and facilitate the broad
spectrum across research
and development,
sustainability,
commercialization and
technology transfer
a roadmap for building out
national cyberinfrastructure
(network, computing, data,
instruments, community)

8. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
A successful strategy is one where
we are given financial, material and
professional support to accomplish our
(shared) objectives
1. integrated cyberinfrastructure that leverages
the investments made in network, computing
and middleware towards knowledge
discovery
2. professional capacity to develop NEP
projects into sustainable and/or commercial
endeavors

9. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
computing services (HPC / cloud / whatever)
should exist to satisfy different scientific
computing requirements
HPC CLOUD

10. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
Research creates huge amounts of
poorly analyzed data
represented using ad-hoc formats that typically
can’t be efficiently indexed, integrated, queried
or consumed
it impedes progress, and this needs to be
addressed in a meaningful way

11. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
The Semantic Web is a web of knowledge
It is about standards for publishing, sharing and querying
knowledge drawn from diverse sources
It enables the answering of
sophisticated questions
cyberinfrastructure
needs to make use
of such standards

12. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
myth #1:myth #1:
People don’t likePeople don’t like
or want to shareor want to share
datadata
they will do sothey will do so
with properwith proper
incentivesincentives

13. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
maximize investments in middleware
i)promote integration and interoperability
ii)facilitate sustainability and
commercializaiton

14. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
Specific recommendations
• define a coherent vision
– to guide and be advocated by government,
funding agencies, researchers and industry
• use / extend data standards and promote
software interoperability
– facilitate software and data as services
• develop expert capacity and involve
professional support networks
– commercialization and technology transfer

15. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010

16. Dumontier::CANARIE user forum 2010
dumontierlab.com
michel_dumontier@carleton.ca