A new research project is giving scientists remote access to Canadian 'big science' facilities - allowing them to control scientific experiments - at just a click of the mouse.

Under its Network-Enabled Platforms program, CANARIE awarded $1.7 million to researchers at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) to lead a multi-institutional project called Science Studio.

The UWO researchers are working in partnership with Canada's national synchrotron research facility, the Canadian Light Source (CLS) in Saskatoon, as well as Concordia University in Montreal and IBM Canada. The project aims to create a complete experiment management system that will allow researchers to observe and control all aspects of research carried out at the CLS and potentially at other specialized laboratories throughout Canada.

As a distributed system, Science Studio will provide the end-user with a browser-based interface to the devices and analysis programs they need to run scientific experiments. Using a standard web browser, the interface will communicate with the Canadian Light Source's beamline services and applications over networks such as CANARIE and ORION.

Project participants hope the system will be a forum for real-time experimentation, live observation and data analysis that will, in essence, transform how science is carried out using Canada's unique research facilities.

The overall approach will make these 'big science' facilities seem as though they are right next door and provide the feedback that researchers need to optimize the use of their time. Science Studio will enable researchers to easily move raw data from these major instruments to computational facilities for subsequent processing and visualization.

"The sooner researchers can get the results, the sooner they can adjust the experiment," says Dr. Michael Bauer of the Computer Science Department at UWO, and one of Science Studio's principal leads. "This will save a huge amount of time in terms of doing research."

The project will begin by using the VESPERS beamline (a hard x-ray microprobe capable of providing a high level of complementary structural and analytical information) at the Canadian Light Source and the Nanofabrication Laboratory at UWO. Analysis programs will reside at UWO and take advantage of the high performance computing capacity of the Shared Hierarchical Advanced Research Computing Network (SHARCNET).

SHARCNET is fulfilling two roles: storage of collected data and data processing for near real-time analysis. Science Studio is meant to only provide enough storage for carrying out experiments and some analysis. "We expect users to store results on SHARCNET as the experiments progress," says Bauer.

"We are using SHARCNET's cell processing system to develop analysis software that would enable a researcher running an experiment to carry out some preliminary analyses in near real time," said Bauer. "The experimenter could then adjust or change the experiment, such as changing the scan to a new location."

A CANARIE lightpath from CLS to UWO's servers is planned to be up and running in the fall. The Ontario portion will be routed over ORION. This will allow data to be moved from CLS to SHARCNET for analysis and then displayed at scientists' workstations. To the end-user, it will be seamless and look like one application, even though the data may be coming from different data sources and the devices are located at different facilities.

Science Studio will be built around a newly-developed set of web services software that allows remote access to and control of experiments, easy sharing of results with collaborators, scheduling of user time, and access to the most recent data treatment programs at different computational facilities. When completed, the system will be used to integrate and ensure collaboration with diverse organizations, systems, devices, and information systems to effectively meet the needs of researchers and more effectively leverage the joint capabilities of participating organizations.

The benefits to scientists and to science research in Canada are impressive: not only does Science Studio improve scientists' access to some major Canadian science facilities, it also enhances collaboration and awareness of other related research. Scientists will benefit from reduced travel time and costs; a reduction in the amount of duplicated data entry; no longer needing to learn multiple system interfaces; and simplifying the handling of large amounts of data.

"Eventually, the idea is to make Science Studio available to anyone using the VESPERS beamline," said Bauer. "We would also like to see Science Studio move to other beamlines - at CLS and maybe at other synchrotrons in other countries."

Learn more at http://sciencestudioproject.com.