Introduction

The main goal of the Cyber-infrastructure Research and Development Lab (Cyber Lab) is to build an advanced cyber-infrastructure, which consists of hardware, middleware, application software, and system support and service personnel, to enable researchers and learners to take advantages of available repositories, computational tools and resources at ICST to accelerate knowledge discovery. Several projects are currently underway.

Information Management System for Environmental Science

This project is part of a more comprehensive vision of developing an online system for managing, monitoring, and predicting environmental impacts for watershed and air quality. The system enables public and private organizations, academic institutions, local and federal governments as well as concerned citizens to partners in finding solutions for environmental problems. Data, simulation and visualization tools, and high performance computing resources are integrated in a transparent manner that allows users to address environmental issues without being hindered by their lack of computing experience.

Crowdsourcing Drug Discovery

In an effort of creating a link between frontiers of research and the public, a new project that is currently under development in the Cyber Lab is to create a cloud enable cyber-infrastructure that provides seamless integration between research and education, known as e-Science Community Laboratory (SciCoLab). It is a web-based cyber-infrastructure that allows the public to contribute to research discovery, and is accessible anytime, anywhere, and by anyone. This redefines the traditional research paradigm: who can participate, how it is done, and who has access to the resulting data. SciCoLab directly involves public audiences of all ages, education, and interests to work virtually side-by-side with researchers using research tools that enable participation in the screening of potential drug candidates against diseases, a critical step of drug discovery research. e-Science CoLab can be extended to other areas of science where public participation can have important impacts.