A New Way to Collaborate
December 2007 / January 2008
Volume 5 Number 6
In today's scientific world, researchers frequently have to travel large distances to complete large projects. To collaborate effectively, scientists often drive, ride or fly great distances to attend meetings all over the world to review data, discuss progress and present results. Trips to conferences, workshops, seminars and tutorials also require some scientists to spend more time on the road than in the lab.
To save themselves the wear and tear of near-continuous travel, and to reduce the enormous carbon footprint created by the fuel they consume, scientists have for years looked for a way to sustain their personal connections without having to leave their home labs or universities. Scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory have developed a revolutionary collaborative product, called the Access Grid, that may allow these researchers to have their cake (face-to-face meetings) and eat it too (by not having to travel at all).
"Collaborative science does not have to mean excessive travel," said Rick Stevens, associate laboratory director for computing and life sciences. "With the Access Grid, researchers can work together naturally, seeing and talking with each other and sharing materials, while polluting less by avoiding travel."
In 2007, the Access Grid received a R&D 100 award, which is presented annually to the top 100 new technologies. Developed by computer scientists at Argonne's "Futures Lab," the Access Grid combines high-speed video and audio capabilities with more traditional presentation capabilities such as PowerPoint—€”all projected on a wall-sized tiled display.
"The Access Grid was built specifically to enable groups of people from across the country or around the world to interact with one another as if they were in the same room," says Mike Papka, who has directed much of the development of the Access Grid at Argonne. The Access Grid comprises a number of "virtual venues," which are essentially conference rooms in cyberspace. When users enter a venue, they can see not only the other participants but also any data files or computer applications they have open.
In contrast to its more familiar counterparts —€”teleconferencing and videoconferencing —€”the Access Grid provides a "sense of presence" to the participants. Unlike teleconferencing, it displays remote participants on wall-size screens. Also, users have the ability to leave their venue, return later and replay parts of the prior meeting or discussion.
Unlike commercial videoconferencing software, the Grid offers the first free, extensible, open source collaborative environment downloadable from the project's website. Moreover, the system is scalable; that is, the number of video streams sent and displayed is limited only by the number of available machines and network bandwidth.
Additionally, the system incorporates a professional sound system that eliminates the need for individual microphones by capturing participants speaking in any part of the room. By doing so, it effectively eliminates the exclusively one-way conversations typical of teleconferences. In the Access Grid, the only difference between remote and local colleagues is that between a wave and a handshake.
The idea grew out of research in Argonne's Futures Lab in the mid-1990s that took as its core principle that a series of technological advances would soon free up virtually unlimited bandwidth. While other researchers saw a greater potential in connecting individual researchers through desktop programs, the Access Grid team decided to focus on environments for groups of users.
"It might seem contradictory to talk about huge collaborations and then say that we were focusing on smaller groups of, say, 3 to 20 users," said Stevens, who spearheaded the design of the system. "But we felt that such large projects typically had a core group, and it was that group we decided to target."
Stevens and his team wanted to ensure that the Access Grid was a space where users could "hang out" comfortably with colleagues at other institutions or could participate in more structured events like lectures and conferences. "The Access Grid had to support the same capabilities people have in face-to-face meetings—€”the ability to share ideas, experiments and conversation," he said.
Although modifications and improvements are continuously made to the technology, many institutions have already established their own nodes. "Access Grid nodes have been deployed worldwide and are used more than once per week in most cases. Nearly 4,000 meetings used the Access Grid in 2006.
Collaborative research at Argonne's advanced photon source accelerator (APS) facility provides a prime example of how the Access Grid is helping scientists to "go green." Accelerator users are located all over the world and often have to travel to Argonne for at least several days to perform experiments in person.
As an alternative, some groups who request beam time at the APS have instead sent their samples to Argonne and used the Access Grid to monitor their experiments from their home institutions. The intention is to increase the use of the APS by groups from countries from which travel is restricted.
The Access Grid has also enabled fusion researchers in California to successfully lead experiments at a fusion research facility in the United Kingdom. Via the Access Grid, the scientists were able to compare experimental data and make rapid decisions about parameter changes for the next plasma pulse experiment less than 20 minutes later.
In addition to minimizing unnecessary travel, the Access Grid can be used as to avoid travel into dangerous areas. For example, in 2003 radiologists throughout Taiwan used the Access Grid to review patients' x-rays during the SARS epidemic. Because the virus was so potent, doctors did not want to risk infection by traveling to other affected areas. The Access Grid enabled the radiologists to review data from many different locations quickly.
Gail Pieper and Jared Sagoff are communications specialists at Argonne National Laboratory.
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