CyVerse is a cyberinfrastructure that aims to transform life science research through data-driven discovery. It provides data storage, analysis tools, computing resources, and training to help researchers manage and analyze large datasets. CyVerse also collaborates with other projects to build an ecosystem supporting open science. It has already supported over 500 publications and stores over 2 petabytes of user data, demonstrating its impact on the research community.

1. CYVERSE: TRANSFORMING LIFE
SCIENCE RESEARCH VIA
CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
Matthew Vaughn @mattdotvaughn
Director, Life Sciences Computing, TACC
Co-PI Cyverse, Araport, Jetstream Cloud
9/8/2016 1

2. OVERVIEW
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• WHAT IS CYVERSE?
• HOW IS IT TRANSFORMATIONAL FOR LIFE
SCIENCES RESEARCH?
• HOW DOES IT FIT INTO THE BIGGER SCHEME?
• WHAT DIRECTIONS AND CHALLENGES ARE IN ITS
FUTURE?

3. CYVERSE IS A CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE
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Vision: Transforming science through data-driven
discovery
Mission: To design, develop, deploy, and expand a
national cyberinfrastructure for life
science research, and to train scientists in
its use

4. SUPPORTED BY THE NSF BIO DIRECTORATE
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• Division of Biological
Infrastructure
• $100 Million, 10-year investment
• CyVerse resources are
– Freely available to the
community
– Intended to spur national and
international collaboration for
research and education
iPlant 2008
Empowering a
New Plant Biology
iPlant 2013
Cyberinfrastructure for
Life Science
CyVerse 2016
Transforming
Science Through
Data-Driven
Discovery
DBI-0735191
DBI-1265383

5. 9/8/2016 5
DISRUPTIVE MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGIES

6. NOT JUST ONE DATA TSUNAMI BUT THOUSANDS OF THEM
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7. EXPLOSION IN SOFTWARE AND SYSTEMS COMPLEXITY

8. 9/8/2016 8
INCREASED ADOPTION OF COMPUTATIONAL METHODS

9. RESEARCH TEAMS NEED THIS
 Store, organize, share primary data
 Do basic analysis
 Store, organize, share data products
 Generate and explore hypotheses
 Share analysis code with the scientific public
 Integrate results from new experiments
 Publish data alongside plots, visualizations and
analytical tools
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10. BUT END UP DEALING WITH THIS
 Data lifecycle management
 Fine-grained permission management
 Discoverability
 Version control
 Taming promising new analysis codes (usually
based immature technology)
 Paying for storage, cycles, and consulting
 Making their science reproducible
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11. THE CYVERSE APPROACH
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12. CYVERSE PRODUCT MATRIX
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Atmosphere
User-provisioned, highly configurable cloud computing environment tailored for
sciences
Discovery
Environment
Web-accessible analysis workbench and gateway to national HPC infrastructure
(XSEDE)
Bisque Software for managing, analyzing and visualizing high throughput imaging data
Data Store
Scalable data storage for managing and sharing data across CyVerse’s CI and
external data resources
Science APIs
Automation interfaces to connect data and computation for rapid integration
external resources. Also used as a graduate teaching platform.
DNA Subway Classroom-friendly bioinformatics teaching platform
Powered by CyVerse Third-party applications built on CyVerse’s foundational services and

13. Welch et al. 2013
Bioinformatics
Specialist
Computing
Professional
Bench Scientist
EMPOWER USERS AT ALL LEVELS
Help them avoid
data and
operations siloes

14. 9/8/2016 14
Science
applications
Domain-specific
services
Established
software and CI
Physical resources
Federated
Storage
National CI Virtualization
Job
Scheduling
Single
Sign-on
EaseofUse
EaseofRe-use

15. IMPACTS
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• 500+ publications
• >2PB user data stored
• 40+k registered users
• Millions of compute
hours annually
• Hundreds of trainees

16. CYVERSE IS A HUB
IN A RICH &
COLLABORATIVE
ECOSYSTEM
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• Using
• Collaborating
• Contributing
• Supporting
• Inventing

17. CURRENT INITIATIVES
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Enabling Data-Driven Discovery. Providing Advanced Training to Researchers. Removing
Barriers to Reproducible Science.
Cyverse Data Commons
Portable Science Lab
Intensive Engagement

18. CYVERSE DATA COMMONS
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Make research data discoverable and reusable. Ensure it ends up stored in its natural repository.
Cyverse Data
Store
Staging Area
Data Commons
Portal
Natural
Repositories
Publish in place
simply by sharing
Curate, format,
describe metadata
Published
snapshot with
DOI and open
access
Facilitated deposit
to NCBI-SRA,
Genbank, and
more

19. PORTABLE SCIENCE LAB
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Continue adoption of technologies to describe, encapsulate, and share research code and
data.
Virtual machines, Linux containers, Web Service APIs,
Workflow Standards
Integrated via Interactive, Narrative
Notebooks

20. INTENSIVE ENGAGEMENT
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Extended
Collaborative
Support
Consultation and
Support Forums
Hands-on
Training and
Tutorials
Enhanced
Support Tooling
Empower
Researchers to
Embrace and
Extend Cyverse

21. SUMMARY
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• CyVerse is a reference model for cyberinfrastructure that is already
being extended to other disciplines
• CyVerse provides a vertically integrated, scalable data-to-discovery
cyberinfrastructure that leverages existing federal and state
investments to transform life science research
• Cyverse is driving technological and operational innovation via a
web of interactions and collaborations with other projects,
platforms, and infrastructures.

22. KEY CHALLENGE - CYVERSE VALUE PROPOSITION
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“Are you still going to be around in 3 years?”
”Why did my analysis fail? Don’t you have big computers?”
“Shouldn’t we just go to Amazon Web Services?”
“I don’t want my students spending time learning computing.”
“Why aren’t you working on X?”

23. DISCUSSION
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@mattdotvaughn www.slideshare.net/mattdotvaughn vaughn@tacc.utexas.edu