History

U.S. Department of Energy scientists have long been using networks to support their research, and with the explosive growth of networking and the world wide web there has arisen a major opportunity to transform how science and engineering is done in the DOE system.

"The fusion of computers and electronic communications has the potential to dramatically enhance the output and productivity of US researchers. A major step toward realizing that potential can come from combining the interests of the scientific community at large with those of the computer science and engineering community to create integrated, tool-oriented computing and communication systems to support scientific collaboration. Such systems can be called collaboratories."

From National Collaboratories -- Applying Information Technology for Scientific Research, Committee on a National Collaboratory, National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., 1993.

DOE Distributed, Collaborative Experimental Environments Program

Reports like these and early collaboratory efforts by DOE scientists created a vision of new  capabilities that would provide a nationwide and worldwide environment in which people, instrumentation, and information could flow and interact seamlessly. In 1995, the Office of Mathematical, Information, and Computational Sciences in the US Department of Energy inaugurated the Distributed, Collaborative Experimental Environments Program (DCEE). The goal of this program was to start to make the vision a reality for the scientific community, especially for the use of large and unique DOE scientific research facilities. The DCEE consisted of two inter-related components: testbeds to define and prototype scientific environments, and technologies to address specific functions necessary to enable the distributed environments, but not currently available.

The DCEE revealed both the tremendous potential of collaboratories and the substantial technical challenges of making collaboratories a routine practice in the Energy Department. Concurrent with DCEE work, a series of white papers and workshops defined the impact that a major investment in collaboratories could have on DOE science, and the technical challenges that needed to be addressed. One of the new roles that emerged for collaboratories was integrating efforts across disciplines and organizations. This integration role could have important results for the US Department of Energy, where science and engineering efforts range from basic research to field studies to large engineering and production facilities. Likewise, contributors to US Department of Energy projects span federal agencies, contractors, universities, and industry.

DOE2000 Program

In 1998, the DOE2000 program began with the goal of bringing innovation to, and accelerating the development of, communication systems, computational capabilities, and collaboration strategies. The program had two areas of emphasis:

• Advanced Computational Testing and Simulation (ACTS): focused on the development of the essential infrastructure and simulation tools.
• National Collaboratories: coalesced computing tools from ACTS and other sources, networks, research facility instrumentation, and collaboration tools into collaboration environments that impacted major components of scientific inquiry.

By using these technologies to collaborate with teams around the world, researchers are pioneering their use in scientific research and radically changing how science and engineering are done in the US Department of Energy system.

National Collaboratories Program

The success of DOE2000 lead to collaboratories having a major role in DOE's long-range plan for scientific computing. Today's National Collaboratories Program develops, integrates and deploys a wide range of software tools that enable geographically-distributed research teams to work together effectively and that facilitate remote access to both facilities and data resources. A major challenge of this effort is characterized by an emerging class of advanced network-based applications referred to as "grid" computing-namely the flexible, secure, and coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals and resources.

References

Zakon, Robert. July 2000. Hobbes' Internet Timeline, Version 6.0.