Experimenter's portal: the collection, management and analysis of scientific data from remote sites

This paper describes an e-Science initiative to enable teams of scientists to run experiments with secure links at one or more advanced research facilities. The software provides a widely distributed team with a set of controls and screens via common browsers to operate, observe and record essential parts of an experiment and to access remote cloud-based analysis software to process the large data sets that are often involved in complex experiments. This paper describes the architecture of the software, the underlying web services used for remote access to research facilities and describes the cloud-based approach for data analysis. The core services are general and can be used as the basis for access to a variety of systems, though specific screen interfaces and analysis software must be tailored to a facility. For illustrative purposes, we focus on use of the system to access a single site - a synchrotron beamline at the Canadian Light Source. We conclude with a discussion of the generality and extensibility of the software and services.