Research Collaboration Platforms

The Science Gateway: Sharing Active Compute Environments, Not Just Files.

Breaking Institutional Silos

Collaborative research requires sharing petabytes of data and active compute environments across institutional boundaries. We build Science Gateways that allow partners to run code on your hardware without the friction of local account creation or insecure data downloads.

1. The Research Hub Architecture

We implement a Hub-and-Spoke model where a central portal orchestrates specialized research services:

  • The Hub: Central dashboard for project & member management.
  • Identity Spoke: Federated login via CILogon / InCommon.
  • Compute Spoke: Interactive Jupyter and RStudio environments.
  • Data Spoke: Unified project folders tiered across Lustre and S3.

2. Specialized Features for Academic Partnerships

Data Sovereignty

Implement "Embargo" logic: Data is visible to the consortium during research but automatically flips to Public Open Access (with DOI) upon publication.

Compute Capsules

Guaranteeing Reproducibility. Share capsules containing Code + Data + Dockerfile. Collaborators run exact containers on the HPC cluster with one click.

Resource Tracking

Granular accounting for PIs. Set soft and hard quotas for external partners to prevent grant drainage through automated resource tracking.

3. The Science Gateway Stack

Component Recommended Tool Role
Portal Open OnDemand Web interface for launching apps and managing cluster files.
Sharing Globus Guest Collections Sharing TB-scale data without local Linux accounts.
Interactive JupyterHub Spawning notebooks directly on HPC compute nodes.
Code GitLab (Self-Hosted) IP-protected code hosting with integrated CI/CD pipelines.

Automated Federated Onboarding

Don't let manual account creation be your bottleneck. Our automated workflow adds a university partner in 60 seconds:

  1. Invite: PI enters the partner's university email.
  2. Auth: Partner logs in via CILogon using home institution credentials.
  3. Provisioning: Platform API automatically maps the token to a local project group.
  4. Access: Collaborator is live with shared folder and compute rights.

Scale Your Global Partnerships

Download our "Science Gateway Implementation Blueprint" to learn how to build a federated research environment.

Download Collaboration Guide (.docx)