emsl function types
DESCRIPTION
Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL) Collaboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. EMSL function types. Primary type: shared instrument Secondary: product development, expert consultation. EMSL collaboratory basics. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL) Collaboratory
at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
EMSL function types
• Primary type: shared instrument
• Secondary: product development, expert consultation
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EMSL collaboratory basics
• Makes NMR instruments at Pacific Northwest Labs available to external users remotely
• DOE funded instruments, mandated 50% of instrument time to external users
• EMSL collaboratory has developed both synchronous and asychronous tools to support remote use
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Clarification of terms
• External users- not housed at PNNL
• Remote users- external users who decide to operate instruments remotely
• Local experts- scientists who work at PNNL full time
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Phases of EMSL
1993- StartupInternal funding +subcontract
1996 Development
DOE 2000
2001Ongoing-
Split operations and research
Explore toolset, Develop CORE2000
Pilot study usage
Continue CORE2000
Adopt VNC
Develop E-Lab notebook
Continued operations at EMSL- internally funded
NATIONAL COLLABORATORIES Continued research on E- Lab Notebooks and middleware
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Access to…
• Access to instruments
• Acess to people
• Access to information
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Access to instruments
• NMR set at PNNL, + other instruments at PNNL
• Higher powered NMRs are oversubscribed 2x to 3x
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Access to people
• Dedicated staff for external user support
• Onsite scientists have a fund to charge for assisting external users
• Work with onsite scientists often turns into full-fledged collaboration
• Remote access means less casual contact with other users- Balkanization
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Access to information
• Electronic Lab Notebook provides small group workspace
• Little demand for larger-scale knowledge management (e.g. other researchers’ experiments) due to the small project size of the scientific work
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Technology used
• CORE 2000
• VNC
• E-lab notebook
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CORE 2000 (Collaborative research environment)
• Screen sharing
• Chat, whiteboard
• Video conferencing, remote-control camera on instrument panel
• Molecular modeling
• Voting tool
• Extensible
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VNC
• Replaced custom tele-viewer• General purpose screen sharing, uses
whatever interface is available• Free, open source from AT&T lab London• Supplemented with phone, instrument
camera• (Is commoditification the future of
collaboratory tools?)
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Electronic Lab Notebook
• General purpose lab notebook• Form-based text and formula composition,
editing, publishing • Image capture+ molecular modeling software• Two levels of security, digital signatures• Can capture direct from instruments, including
settings and output• ‘Killer app’ for collaborations that are
distributed, image-intensive, or access controlled
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Resourcediagram
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Issues from diagram
• Flow of money is much simpler than a fee-for-service, one of the EMSL success factors
• Balkanization issue- remote users don’t talk to each other (do they need to?)
• PNNL very central for information flow, instrument time allocation, opportunity for co-publication
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Usage
• Instruments oversubscribed for external users, proposals evaluated and time awarded on a 6-month schedule
• Remote acces is optional for all remote users, currently is about 25% of use
• Not always the same 25%!• Often groups include both collocated
and remote collaborators• (E-lab has a separate base of ~1500
registered users)
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Motivation of collaborators
• Professional support• Local experts have a fund to draw from
for external user support• Collaboration (co-authorship) is
common between local and remote users
• Co-authorship usually given to instrument experts
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Diffusion of innovation
• Reasons for using:– Save $ on travel– Involve more people, e.g. students, outside
collaborators– Occasional changes of plans, e.g. pregnancy
• Other factors promoting adoption– Fits with existing practice– Trialability- use students to try out remote
access with lower risk
– Adoption by new disciplines-- Biologists
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Diffusion of innovation
• Where is EMSL on the adoption curve?
• Is 25-30% remote use the peak penetration for this facility?
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Diffusion of innovation
• Given that this project has tried a nearly comprehensive set of collaboratory technologies…
• What set of CORE 2000 and ELN are most used/ useful?
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Operations versus R&D
• Some EMSL work was funded to support current users, some R&D
• Pragmatic concern for users led to VNC adoption, de-emphasis of some other aspects
• Yet there was always some research $ available for advanced development
• This balance seems to have been very healthy- (was it?)