genSpace: Exploring Social Networking Metaphors for Scientific Collaborative Work

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genSpace Exploring Social Networking Metaphors
for Scientific Collaborative Work

• Gail Kaiser, Swapneel Sheth, Chris Murphy
• kaiser, swapneel, cmurphy _at_ cs.columbia.edu
• Programming Systems Lab
• Department of Computer Science
• Columbia University

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genSpace Goals

• Prior collaboratories for bioinformatics
  scientists
• Tool sharing (e.g. BioCoRE from UIUC)?
• Data sharing (e.g. BSC from PNNL)?
• Instead, we seek to introduce knowledge sharing
• What tools / datasets should I use to investigate
  this problem?
• Who do I know who also uses this tool / dataset?
• Which tools and datasets work nicely together?
• Where does this tool / dataset fit in a typical
  workflow?
• When did I previously use this tool / dataset?
• How can I get help (from an expert who is online
  right now)?

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genSpace Goals

• Social Networking facilitates Collaborative
  Filtering
• What movies would I like?
• Who also likes this book?
• Which food and wine go together?
• Where does this song fit in the playlist?
• When was this restaurant last reviewed?
• How can I get help about ltxxxgt?
• We investigate Social Networking Modelsas an
  approach to Scientific Knowledge Sharing
• We are implementing a prototype for geWorkbench

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genSpace Technical Details

• genSpace client is a geWorkbench component,
  separate centralized genSpace server
• Instrument geWorkbench to capture and
  recordanalysis events
• Aggregate event logs for communities of users
• Data-mine event patterns
• Automatically construct networks of similar
  users
• Automatically construct implicit
  workflowsconsisting of sequences of analysis
  tools
• Query via Instant Messaging (IM) bots
• Visualize networks and workflows

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genSpace Architecture
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genSpace plugin for geWorkbench
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IM based query interface (jclaim)
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Single Workflow Visualization
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Workflow Relationship Visualization
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genSpace Research Questions

• We do not aim to (directly) produce new results
  answering bioinformatics research questions
• Instead, we seek to make it easier for
  bioinformaticsresearchers to find answers to
  their own questions
• We do, however, seek to produce (direct) new
  research results of interest in software systems
• Adapting a social metaphor for collaborative
  work
• Data mining implicit workflows
• Publish/subscribe based on implicit participation
  intool and dataset use communities
• Security/privacy implications and amelioration

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