Research proposal: Barriers to new user and new domain adoption of the XSEDE cyberinfrastructure

Abstract

This research proposal proposes the examination of user attitudes about the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). The XSEDE project supports basic research with a common system for making use of national cyberinfrastructure. The systems and infrastructure that make XSEDE useful for researchers are part of an actor network: these systems are socially constructed and they play their own part in the work of XSEDE, and in turn have an effect on the progress of basic research. I have completed previous work on the user relationships in the predecessor to XSEDE, the TeraGrid, and currently carry out participant observation with the management groups of the XSEDE project. By understanding the barriers to adoption of XSEDE by new researchers and new scientific domains, I hope to explore the linkage between resources (in this case computational resources) and scientific outputs.