skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Chatbot Guided Domain-science Knowledge Discovery in a Science Gateway Application
Neuroscientists are increasingly relying on high performance/throughput computing resources for experimentation on voluminous data, analysis and visualization at multiple neural levels. Though current science gateways provide access to computing resources, datasets and tools specific to the disciplines, neuroscientists require guided knowledge discovery at various levels to accomplish their research/education tasks. The guidance can help them to navigate them through relevant publications, tools, topic associations and cloud platform options as they accomplish important research and education activities. To address this need and to spur research productivity and rapid learning platform development, we present “OnTimeRecommend”, a novel recommender system that comprises of several integrated recommender modules through RESTful web services. We detail a neuroscience use case in a CyNeuro science gateway, and show how the OnTimeRecommend design can enable novice/expert user interfaces, as well as template-driven control of heterogeneous cloud resources.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1730655
PAR ID:
10311945
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
14th Gateway Computing Environments Conference
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Scientists in disciplines such as neuroscience and bioinformatics are increasingly relying on science gateways for experimentation on voluminous data, as well as analysis and visualization in multiple perspectives. Though current science gateways provide easy access to computing resources, datasets and tools specific to the disciplines, scientists often use slow and tedious manual efforts to perform knowledge discovery to accomplish their research/education tasks. Recommender systems can provide expert guidance and can help them to navigate and discover relevant publications, tools, data sets, or even automate cloud resource configurations suitable for a given scientific task. To realize the potential of integration of recommenders in science gateways in order to spur research productivity,we present a novel “OnTimeRecommend" recommender system. The OnTimeRecommend comprises of several integrated recommender modules implemented as microservices that can be augmented to a science gateway in the form of a recommender-as-a-service. The guidance for use of the recommender modules in a science gateway is aided by a chatbot plug-in viz., Vidura Advisor. To validate our OnTimeRecommend, we integrate and show benefits for both novice and expert users in domain-specific knowledge discovery within two exemplar science gateways, one in neuroscience (CyNeuro) and the other in bioinformatics (KBCommons). 
    more » « less
  2. The goal of a robust cyberinfrastructure (CI) ecosystem is to catalyse discovery and innovation. Tapis does this through offering a sustainable production-quality set of API services to support modern science and engineering research, which increasingly span geographically distributed data centers, instruments, experimental facilities, and a network of national and regional CI. Leveraging frameworks, such as Tapis, enables researchers to accomplish computational and data-intensive research in a secure, scalable, and reproducible way and allows them to focus on their research instead of the technology needed to accomplish it. This project aims to enable the integration of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and CloudyCluster resources into Tapis- supported science gateways to provide on-demand scaling needed by computational workflows. The new functionality uses Tapis event-driven Abaco Actors and CloudyCluster to create an elastic distributed cloud computing system on demand. This integration allows researchers and science gateways to augment cloud resources on top of existing local and national computing resources. 
    more » « less
  3. Neuro-scientists are increasingly relying on parallel and distributed computing resources for analysis and visualization of their neuron simulations. Although science gateways have democratized relevant high performance/throughput resources, users require expert knowledge about programming and infras-tructure configuration that is beyond the repertoire of most neuroscience programs. These factors become deterrents for the successful adoption and the ultimate diffusion (i.e., systemic spread) of science gateways in the neuroscience community. In this paper, we present a novel intuitionistic fuzzy logic based conversational recommender that can provide guidance to users when using science gateways for research and education workflows. The users interact with a context-aware chatbot that is embedded within custom web-portals to obtain simulation tools/resources to accomplish their goals. In order to ensure user goals are met, the chatbot profiles a user’s cyberinfrastructure and neuroscience domain proficiency level using a ‘usability quadrant’ approach. Simulation of user queries for an exemplary neuroscience use case demonstrates that our chatbot can provide step-by-step navigational support and generate distinct responses based on user proficiency. 
    more » « less
  4. Neuro-scientists are increasingly relying on parallel and distributed computing resources for analysis and visualization of their neuron simulations. Although science gateways have democratized relevant high performance/throughput resources, users require expert knowledge about programming and infrastructure configuration that is beyond the repertoire of most neuroscience programs. These factors become deterrents for the successful adoption and the ultimate diffusion (i.e., systemic spread) of science gateways in the neuroscience community. In this paper, we present a novel intuitionistic fuzzy logic based conversational recommender that can provide guidance to users when using science gateways for research and education workflows. The users interact with a context-aware chatbot that is embedded within custom web-portals to obtain simulation tools/resources to accomplish their goals. In order to ensure user goals are met, the chatbot profiles a user’s cyberinfrastructure and neuroscience domain proficiency level using a ‘usability quadrant’ approach. Simulation of user queries for an exemplary neuroscience use case demonstrates that our chatbot can provide step-by-step navigational support and generate distinct responses based on user proficiency. 
    more » « less
  5. Large scale collaborative science requires tools to facilitate sharing of data, protocols, analysis tools, as well as data products and their provenance. We describe here two recent science gateways successfully deployed to accomplish collaborative research. The first is the Synergistic Discovery and Design Environment (SD2E), which was a web-based analysis platform for collaborative analysis, data sharing, and application development. The second is the 3D Electron Microscopy (3DEM) portal, which is a web-based research platform focused on developing and disseminating new technologies for enhanced resolution 3DEM. Both gateways were hosted and connected to high-performance computing resources at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. 
    more » « less