Data and Communications in Basic Energy Sciences: Creating a Pathway for Scientific Discovery

Executive Summary The Department of Energy (DOE) Workshop on " Data and Communications in Basic Energy Sciences: Creating a Pathway for Scientific Discovery " was held at the Bethesda Marriott in Maryland on October 24-25, 2011. The workshop brought together leading researchers from the Basic Energy Sciences (BES) facilities and Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR). The workshop was co-sponsored by these two Offices to identify opportunities and needs for data analysis, ownership, storage, mining, provenance and data transfer at light sources, neutron sources, microscopy centers and other facilities. Their charge was to identify current and anticipated issues in the acquisition, analysis, communication and storage of experimental data that could impact the progress of scientific discovery, ascertain what knowledge, methods and tools are needed to mitigate present and projected shortcomings and to create the foundation for information exchanges and collaboration between ASCR and BES supported researchers and facilities. The workshop was organized in the context of the impending data tsunami that will be produced by DOE's BES facilities. Current facilities, like SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Linac Coherent Light Source, can produce up to 18 terabytes (TB) per day, while upgraded detectors at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Advanced Light Source will generate ~10TB per hour. The expectation is that these rates will increase by over an order of magnitude in the coming decade. The urgency to develop new strategies and methods in order to stay ahead of this deluge and extract the most science from these facilities was recognized by all. The four focus areas addressed in this workshop were: ● Workflow Management-Experiment to Science: Identifying and managing the data path from experiment to publication. ● Theory and Algorithms: Recognizing the need for new tools for computation at scale, supporting large data sets and realistic theoretical models. ● Visualization and Analysis: Supporting near-real-time feedback for experiment optimization and new ways to extract and communicate critical information from large data sets. ● Data Processing and Management: Outlining needs in computational and communication approaches and infrastructure needed to handle unprecedented data volume and information content. It should be noted that almost all participants recognized that there were unlikely to be any turn-key solutions available due to the unique, diverse nature of the BES Data and Communications in BES: Creating a Pathway for Scientific Discovery 2 community, where research at adjacent beamlines at a given light source facility often span everything from biology to materials …