Community Cyber Infrastructure Enabled Discovery in Science and Engineering

Cyber infrastructure for discovery in science and engineering has not only enhanced the process of discovery but has also enabled new venues for discovery including systems biology, ecosystem modeling, and individualized medicine. The transition from enhancing to enabling discovery in science and engineering has led to what the authors term the Silicon Shift. In this paper, they conceptualize the vision of a Community Cyber Infrastructure (CCI), shared by the research community, that would enable a new era of multi-disciplinary discovery. They introduce the concept of cyber communities and outline the process of discovery utilizing community cyber infrastructure. The emphasis of this paper is to lay out the essential attributes of CCI including requirements, functional architecture, and examples of implementation options.