ARCHIVED: Completed project: Network Workbench

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Primary UITS contact: Eric Wernert

Completed: May 18, 2009

Description: The goal of the NSF-funded Network Workbench (NWB) project is to design, evaluate, and operate a unique distributed, shared resources environment for large-scale network analysis, modeling, and visualization. The envisioned data-code-computing resources environment will provide a one-stop online portal for researchers, educators, and practitioners interested in the study of biomedical, social and behavioral science, physics, and other networks. For more information, see the NWB home page.

UITS's role in the project is to contribute to the design, development, and deployment of the NWB cyberinfrastructure. UITS Research Technologies staff are working with SLIS personnel during the summer of 2008 to refresh the hardware and maintenance plan for key servers in the CyberInfrastructure for Network Science Center.

The UITS Advanced Visualization Lab is also supporting public exhibits and outreach activities from the related Places and Spaces project. Major objectives realized in 2008 include a full rewrite of the software and redesign of the hardware used to support the "illuminated diagram" component of Places and Spaces. This technology was successfully deployed at the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing (May-November 2008), the ITSP2 technology showcase (May 2008), IU's Foundations for Innovation exhibit at Supercomputing '08 in Austin, Texas (November 2008), and the Science Express Train in Germany (April-November 2009). A paper and presentation covering this work will be presented at the AACE Ed-MEDIA 2009 Conference (June 2009).

Outcome and benefits: The NWB will provide members of the scientific research community at large (biologists, physicists, computer scientists, social and behavioral scientists, engineers, etc.) with the means to carry out network analysis, modeling, and visualization projects in their own fields. This will result in a direct transfer of knowledge and results from the fields of specialist network research to a wider scientific community. Researchers will have access to validated algorithms that in the past have been obtained through time-consuming personal development of ad hoc computer programs. The NWB is expected to enhance and encourage the empirical analysis and model validation of networks, generating an eventual acceleration in the development of network science research. Online instructional material will support the use of the NWB in educational settings.

Client impact: In addition to the PI and co-PIs listed below, this project benefits faculty members in various disciplines where network studies are applicable. For example, SLIS doctoral candidate and UITS director, D. Scott McCaulay, employed NWB to visualize the results of a music similarity analysis conducted over a large-scale digital music collection using IU's research cyberinfrastructure (see the SC08 poster abstract).

Project sponsor: Craig Stewart, Associate Dean for Research Technologies

Project team:

  • Katy Börner (SLIS, IUB), PI
  • Laszlo Barabasi (Physics, Northeastern University), co-PI
  • Santiago Schnell (Informatics, IUB), co-PI
  • Alessandro Vespignani (Informatics, IUB), co-PI
  • Stan Wasserman (Psychology, IUB), co-PI
  • Eric Wernert (UITS, IUB), senior personnel
  • Weixia (Bonnie) Huang (SLIS, IUB), system architect
  • Bruce Herr (SLIS, IUB), CI shell architect
  • Cesar Hidalgo (Physics, Notre Dame), developer
  • Santo Fotunato (Informatics, IUB), developer
  • Russell Duhon (CS, IUB), developer
  • Ramy Sabbineni (Bioinformatics, IUB), developer
  • Vivek Thakre (CS, IUB), developer
  • Ben Markines (CS, IUB), developer
  • Jagan Lakshmipathy (UITS, IUPUI), ID2 developer
  • David Reagan(UITS, IUB), ID2 support
  • Mike Boyles (UITS, IUPUI), ID2 project manager

Partner sites: Northeastern University, University of Michigan

Additional information:

  • PI: Katy Börner
  • Funding agency: NSF/CISE, SEI program
  • Award: 0513650
  • Grant dates: September 1, 2005 to August 31, 2008
  • Funding to UITS: $27,860
  • Total funding to IU (before subaward to ND): $1,120,926

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Last modified on 2018-01-18 15:30:20.