Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory EMSL Collaboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Labo

1
Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL)
Collaboratory at the Pacific Northwest National
Laboratory
2
EMSL function types

• Primary type shared instrument
• Secondary product development, expert
  consultation

3
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

4
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

5
Phases of EMSL
6
Access to

• Access to instruments
• Acess to people
• Access to information

7
Access to instruments

• NMR set at PNNL, other instruments at PNNL
• Higher powered NMRs are oversubscribed 2x to 3x

8
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

9
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

10
Technology used

• CORE 2000
• VNC
• E-lab notebook

11
CORE 2000 (Collaborative research environment)

• Screen sharing
• Chat, whiteboard
• Video conferencing, remote-control camera on
  instrument panel
• Molecular modeling
• Voting tool
• Extensible

12
VNC

• Replaced custom tele-viewer
• General purpose screen sharing, uses whatever
  interface is available
• Free, open source from ATT lab London
• Supplemented with phone, instrument camera
• (Is commoditification the future of collaboratory
  tools?)

13
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

14
Resourcediagram
15
Issues from diagram

• Flow of money is much simpler than a
  fee-for-service, one of the EMSL success factors
• Balkanization issue- remote users dont talk to
  each other (do they need to?)
• PNNL very central for information flow,
  instrument time allocation, opportunity for
  co-publication

16
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)

17
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

18
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

19
Diffusion of innovation

• Where is EMSL on the adoption curve?
• Is 25-30 remote use the peak penetration for
  this facility?

20
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?

21
Operations versus RD

• Some EMSL work was funded to support current
  users, some RD
• 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?)