SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Environmental Molecular Science Laboratory (EMSL) Collaboratory at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN EMSL function types Primary type: shared instrument Secondary: product development, expert consultation

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Phases of EMSL Startup Internal funding +subcontract 1996 Development DOE Ongoing- Split operations and research Explore toolset, Develop CORE2000 Pilot study usage Continue CORE2000 Adopt VNC Develop E-Lab notebook Continued operations at EMSL- internally funded NATIONAL COLLABORATORIES Continued research on E- Lab Notebooks and middleware

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Access to… Access to instruments Acess to people Access to information

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Access to instruments NMR set at PNNL, + other instruments at PNNL Higher powered NMRs are oversubscribed 2x to 3x

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Technology used CORE 2000 VNC E-lab notebook

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CORE 2000 (Collaborative research environment) Screen sharing Chat, whiteboard Video conferencing, remote-control camera on instrument panel Molecular modeling Voting tool Extensible

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN VNC Replaced custom tele-viewer General purpose screen sharing, uses whatever interface is available Free, open source from AT&T lab London Supplemented with phone, instrument camera (Is commoditification the future of collaboratory tools?)

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Resource diagram

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Issues from diagram Flow of money is much simpler than a fee-for- service, one of the EMSL success factors Balkanization issue- remote users don’t talk to each other (do they need to?) PNNL very central for information flow, instrument time allocation, opportunity for co- publication

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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)

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Diffusion of innovation Where is EMSL on the adoption curve? Is 25-30% remote use the peak penetration for this facility?

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 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?

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Operations versus R&D Some EMSL work was funded to support current users, some R&D 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?)