Research Infrastructure: MRI: Track 2 Acquisition of Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC)

The Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC, ‘dock’) is a visual data science instrument for University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) science and engineering research and research training. Many UIC researchers are part of multi-disciplinary teams investigating and contributing to solutions for societal issues, in such fields as biology, cybersecurity, healthcare, manufacturing, urban sustainability, and cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous cars). DOCC is a digital Project Room that enables domain scientists and computer scientists to collaborate on real-world problems by providing them with high-performance computing, high-resolution displays, and sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytic, data simulation, image processing, visualization, and virtual-reality software and services. Societal challenges can only be addressed by research teams, with each contributing expertise in complementary areas. DOCC’s Intellectual Merit is two-fold: it provides onsite computing with adequate support, and it provides collaboration software services. With respect to the former, DOCC is a configurable computing environment that prioritizes real-time, interactive, collaborative, data-intensive applications, but can be scheduled off-hours for batch-mode processing. Users can execute codes faster, apply more sophisticated analytics to large-scale problems, gain greater insights, and open new avenues of research. With respect to the latter, DOCC’s collaboration software lets researchers either sit around one of DOCC’s large tables and display walls or video-teleconference in while simultaneously sharing and interacting with their data on the large displays – which remote viewers can access online. To encourage adoption and ensure Broader Impact, DOCC plans to have a visual front end, enabling users to easily access familiar collaboration tools, scientific notebooks, AI workflows, and popular visualization software. Alternatively, users can add new AI models or create them from scratch. And because DOCC is connected to the UIC research network, data and/or computer codes can be ported to remote computer and cloud resources located on campus, regionally, nationally, or internationally. DOCC personnel can assist new users make their applications more robust, dynamic and configurable. DOCC can transform scientific research, data exploration and discovery, recruit and retain new faculty, make cyberinfrastructure more accessible to students, and help educate the next-generation workforce. UIC is a Minority Serving Institution, a Hispanic Serving Institution and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution. DOCC and its associated data will remain active for at least three years after the completion of this project, as demand dictates. Software will be stored and archived via EVL’s storage servers, as well as code repositories. The project website is www.evl.uic.edu/docc This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.