Date of Award

5-24-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Information Science

First Advisor

John Talburt

Abstract

The explosion of digital and observational data is having a profound effect on the nature of scientific inquiry, requiring new approaches to manipulating and analyzing large and complex data and increasing the need for collaborative solid research teams to address these challenges. These data, along with the availability of computational resources and recent advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning software tools, and methods, can enable unprecedented science and innovation. Unfortunately, these software tools and techniques are not uniformly accessible to all communities, mainly scientists and engineers at Minority Serving Institutions (MSI). Cloud computing resources are natural channels to enhance these institutions' research productivity. However, utilizing cloud computing resources for research effectively requires a significant investment in time and effort, awkward manipulation of data sets, and deployment of cloud-based applications workflows that support analysis and visualization tools. It is within the context that the cloud ecosystem in box (CEB) is situated as a unique national tool to provide scaffolding for these communities to exploit cloud resources for research. However, these institutions differ due to the relatively high teaching load of individual faculty members. As a result, faculty often are not engaged in cross-disciplinary discourse on their campuses and collaborative endeavors with faculty at other institutions, resulting in isolated research activities. Additionally, these researchers often fail to see the value in cross-disciplinary endeavors and are under-prepared to employ nonlocal resources in their research. Therefore, our dissertation research activities will focus on one aspect of this effort, community engagement. Our initial target population for CEB is faculty at MSI with existing research awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Entergy (DOE). We confined our focus to the following broad research, (1) cybersecurity, (2) nanoscience, (3) cloud computing, (4) Bioinformatics & Computational Biology. With funding in these areas over the last 36 months, all principal investigators were invited to complete a survey instrument to help us understand their needs within the context of cloud-based research activities on commercial providers. As outlined in the proposal, we have reflected activities to data and our plans over the last twelve months.

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