TeraGrid Planning Process Report: June 2007 Workshop for Science Gateways

Abstract

TeraGrid is a national, comprehensive, distributed infrastructure integrating multiple resources at nine resource provider facilities. In late spring 2007, the NSF awarded a grant to the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UM-SI) to facilitate a community-driven, participatory planning process for the future of TeraGrid. This report describes the results of the first workshop, which focused on the needs of those developing TeraGrid Science Gateways and the needs of Gateway users. Early in its history, TeraGrid conceived the idea for what has become the TeraGrid ScienceGateway program. Recognizing that many disciplinary communities were building elements of their own cyberinfrastrucuture, TeraGrid set out to form partnerships that would provide TeraGrid resources and services to user communities through tools and environments they were already using. Essentially, the gateway concept recognizes that many of today’s scientists use desktop computing applications and web browsers to conduct their work. TeraGrid’s role is as a back-end service provider with the gateways serving as the front end to the user. At the time of the workshop, there were 21 projects with an allocation on the TeraGrid, which is the criterion used to designate a project as a TeraGrid Science Gateway. The workshop was designed to assess how TeraGrid could meet the needs of Science Gateways, specifically the end users of the gateways and the gateway developers.