Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2s) as part of NSF’s SI2 program

Scientific Software Innovation

Institutes (S2I2s) as part of

NSF’s SI2 program

Daniel S. Katz

Program Director, Division of

Advanced Cyberinfrastructure

Cyberinfrastructure

“Cyberinfrastructure consists of

computing systems,

data storage systems,

advanced instruments and

data repositories,

visualization environments, and

people,

all linked together by

software and

high performance networks,

to improve research productivity and

enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible.”

-- Craig Stewart

Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century

Science and Engineering (CIF21)

• Cross-NSF portfolio of activities to provide integrated cyber resources

that will enable new multidisciplinary research opportunities in all

science and engineering fields by leveraging ongoing investments and

using common approaches and components (http://www.nsf.gov/cif21)

• ACCI task force reports (http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/taskforces/index.jsp)

– Campus Bridging, Cyberlearning & Workforce Development, Data

& Visualization, Grand Challenges, HPC, Software for Science &

Engineering

• Vision and Strategy Reports

– ACI - http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf12051

– Software - http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf12113

– Data - http://www.nsf.gov/od/oci/cif21/DataVision2012.pdf

• Implementation

– Implementation of Software Visionhttp://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504817

Software as InfrastructureScience

Software

Computing Infrastructure

• Software (including services) essential for

the bulk of science

- About half the papers in recent issues of

Science were software-intensive projects

- Research becoming dependent upon

advances in software

- Significant software development being

conducted across NSF: NEON, OOI,

NEES, NCN, iPlant, etc

• Wide range of software types: system, applications, modeling,

gateways, analysis, algorithms, middleware, libraries

• Software is not a one-time effort, it must be sustained

• Development, production, and maintenance are people intensive

• Software life-times are long vs hardware

• Software has under-appreciated value

For software to be sustainable,

it must become infrastructure

Software Vision

NSF will take a leadership role in providing

software as enabling infrastructure for

science and engineering research and

education, and in promoting software as a

principal component of its comprehensive

CIF21 vision

• ...

• Reducing the complexity of software will be a

unifying theme across the CIF21 vision,

advancing both the use and development of

new software and promoting the ubiquitous

integration of scientific software across all

disciplines, in education, and in industry

– A Vision and Strategy for Software for Science,

Engineering, and Education – NSF 12-113

Create and maintain a

software ecosystem

providing new

capabilities that

advance and accelerate

scientific inquiry at

unprecedented

complexity and scale

Support the

foundational

research necessary

to continue to

efficiently advance

scientific software

Enable transformative,

interdisciplinary,

collaborative, science

and engineering

research and

education through the

use of advanced

software and services

Transform practice through new

policies for software addressing

challenges of academic culture, open

dissemination and use, reproducibility

and trust, curation, sustainability,

governance, citation, stewardship, and

attribution of software authorship

Develop a next generation diverse

workforce of scientists and

engineers equipped with essential

skills to use and develop software,

with software and services used in

both the research and education

process

Infrastructure Role & Lifecycle

See http://bit.ly/sw-ci for current projects

5 rounds of funding,

65 SSEs


35 SSIs


14 S2I2

conceptualizations

NSF Software Infrastructure Projects

SSE & SSI – NSF 14-520: Cross-NSF, all Directorates participating

Next SSEs due Feb 2015; Next SSIs due June 2015

SI2 Software Activities

• Elements (SSE) & Frameworks (SSI)

– Past general solicitations, with most of NSF (BIO, CISE, EHR,

ENG, MPS, SBE): NSF 10-551 (2011), NSF 11-539 (2012)

• About 65 SSE and 31 SSI projects (24 SSE in FY14)

– Focused solicitation, with MPS/CHE and EPSRC: US/UK

collaborations in computational chemistry, NSF 12-576 (2012)

• 4 SSI projects

– Recent solicitation (NSF 14-520), continues in future years

• Institutes (S2I2)

– Solicitation for conceptualization awards, NSF 11-589 & 13-511

• 14 projects (co-funded with BIO, CISE, ENG, MPS)

– Full institute “solicitation” planned in FY15

• See http://bit.ly/sw-ci for current projects


software ecosystem

providing new

capabilities that



unprecedented


Support the

foundational

research necessary

to continue to

efficiently advance

scientific software


interdisciplinary,


and engineering

research and


use of advanced



policies for software, addressing












process


ACI Software Cluster Programs

• In these programs, ACI works with other NSF

units to support projects that lead to software

as an element of infrastructure

• Issue: amount of software that is

infrastructure grows over time, and grows

faster than NSF funding

Q: How can NSF ensure that software as

infrastructure continues to appear, without

funding all of it?

A: Incentives

• The devil is in the details

• We are exploring this now...

Working Towards Sustainable Software

for Science: Practice and Experiences

(WSSSPE)

• http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk

• Mailing list:

http://lists.researchcomputing.org.uk/listinfo.cgi/wssspe-

researchcomputing.org.uk

• First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science:

Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1), @ SC13, 17

November 2013, Denver

– 2 keynotes, 54 accepted papers

– Discussion sessions: Developing software; Policy; Communities

– Cross-cutting (emergent) topics: Defining sustainability; Career paths

– Post-workshop paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7414

• WSSSPE1.1, @ SciPy2014, Austin

• WSSSPE2, @ SC14, New Orleans

• 29 accepted papers

• Action-oriented

• Report being written

Moving Forward

• WSSSPE: Multiple linked social issues – Sustainability,

Incentives, Career Paths, Communities

• Computational scientists “have a responsibility to convince their

institutions, reviewers, and communities that software is

scholarship, frequently more valuable than a research article”

(Bourne)

• Hypothesis: better measurement of contributions can lead to

rewards (incentives), leading to career paths, willingness to join

communities, leading to more sustainable software

• Recent CISE/ACI & SBE/SES Dear Colleague Letter: Supporting

Scientific Discovery through Norms and Practices for Software

and Data Citation and Attribution (NSF 14-059,

http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14059/nsf14059.jsp)

– There is a lack of well-developed metrics with which to assess the

impact and quality of scientific software and data

– NSF seeks to explore new norms and practices for software and data

citation and attribution, so that data producers, software and tool

developers, and data curators are credited”

• 6 EAGERs and 3 collaborative workshops to be funded

• Other ideas welcome


software ecosystem

providing new

capabilities that



unprecedented


Support the

foundational

research necessary

to continue to

efficiently advance

scientific software


interdisciplinary,


and engineering

research and


use of advanced



policies for software addressing












process


SSEs SSIs

S2I2s

S2I2s

Goals for Institutes

• S2I2 awards will focus on the establishment of

long-term hubs of excellence in software

infrastructure and technologies that will serve a

research community of substantial size and

disciplinary breadth

• Two subclasses of S2I2 awards

– Conceptualization Awards, which are planning awards

aimed at organizing an interdisciplinary community and

understanding their software requirements and

challenges

– Implementation Awards, which will be made to implement

community plans for software infrastructure, such as

those developed by the conceptualization awards

SI2 Solicitation and Decision Process

• Cross-NSF software working group with

members from all directorates

• Determined how SI2 fits with other NSF

programs that support software

– See: Implementation of NSF Software Vision -

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=5

04817

• Discusses solicitations, determines who will

participate in each

• Discusses and participates in review process

• Work together to fund worthy proposals

A View inside NSF Funding

• Cross-NSF activities can be funded under a

variety of models

• SI2 to-date has been funded under:

– ACI sets aside funds

– Other units may or may not set aside funds

– When good proposals arrive, if both ACI and

interested units have sufficient funds allocated, or can

find funds from core or other programs, we fund them

– Some omnidisciplinary proposals may be solely ACI-

funded

• This is ok for small and medium proposals

• For full institute proposals, it likely will not work

Institute Funding

• Goal: Some institutes start in FY15

• To set aside funds for full institutes, NSF needs

expectation that good institute proposals will be

submitted, meaning:

– Strong team, strong ideas, etc.

– Very strong community recognition of need, including

acceptance that this must be funded to enable many

science awards to progress

– Program officers in discipline unit(s) and ACI agree

that the community is behind this effort

– Administrators in discipline unit(s) and ACI are

convinced directly (by community) or indirectly (by

program officers) of the need

Role of S2I2 PIs

• Now: Get “community” behind an institute

– Define community

– Understand what they need

– Convince them that an institute will help them

• That they need an institute

– Bring them in to your vision, or even in to the

institute (engage to the point of shared

leadership)

– Build word of mouth that gets to NSF

• End of project: write institute plan as final

report

• Later: Write a good proposal

Closing Thoughts

• Institute as a provider of resources and

services to enable research and software

development, including education

• The institute must fill a need; not just fill a

building

• Community must want the institute more

than the PIs want to build an institute

• A conceptualization award should be able

to be successful even if it doesn’t

immediately lead to an institute

Resources

• NSF Software as Infrastructure Vision:

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf12113

• Implementation of NSF Software Vision:

http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=504817

• Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) Program

– Scientific Software Elements (SSE) & Scientific Software Integration (SSI) solicitation:

http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf14520

– 2013 PI meeting: https://sites.google.com/site/si2pimeeting/

– 2014 PI meeting: https://sites.google.com/site/si2pimeeting2014/

– Awards: http://bit.ly/sw-ci

• Working towards Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences

(WSSSPE)

– Home: http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk (includes links to all slides & papers)

– 1st workshop paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7414

– 2nd workshop site: http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/wssspe2/

• NSF 14-059: “Dear Colleague Letter - Supporting Scientific Discovery through

Norms and Practices for Software and Data Citation and Attribution”

– http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2014/nsf14059/nsf14059.jsp

Credits:

• SI2 Program:

– Current program officers: Daniel S. Katz, Rudolf Eigenmann, William

Y. B. Chang, John C. Cherniavsky, Almadena Y. Chtchelkanova,

Cheryl L. Eavey, Evelyn Goldfield, Sol Greenspan, Daryl W. Hess,

Peter H. McCartney, Bogdan Mihaila, Dimitrios V. Papavassiliou,

Andrew D. Pollington, Barbara Ransom, Thomas Russell, Massimo

Ruzzene, Nigel A. Sharp, Paul Werbos, Eva Zanzerkia

– Formerly-involved program officers: Manish Parashar, Gabrielle

Allen, Sumanta Acharya, Eduardo Misawa, Jean Cottam-Allen,

Thomas Siegmund

• WSSSPE:

– Organizers: Daniel S. Katz, Gabrielle Allen, Neil Chue Hong, Karen

Cranston, Manish Parashar, David Proctor, Matthew Turk, Colin C.

Venters, Nancy Wilkins-Diehr

– WSSSPE1 summary paper authors: Daniel S. Katz, Sou-Cheng T.

Choi, Hilmar Lapp, Ketan Maheshwari, Frank Löffler, Matthew Turk,

Marcus D. Hanwell, Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, James Hetherington,

James Howison, Shel Swenson, Gabrielle D. Allen, Anne C. Elster,

Bruce Berriman, Colin Venters

– Keynote speakers: Phil Bourne, Arfon Smith, Kaitlin Thaney, Neil

Chue Hong

Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2s) as part of NSF’s SI2 program

Science

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