The Evolving Role of NSF Software Programs and Software Gateways in a National Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem

Abstract: The Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI) seeks to encourage, support and incentivize its community to create a sustainable national scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. In keeping with this intent ACI’s software programs seek to holistically promote **software-centric** ecosystems that are seen by stakeholder communities as their primary means of furthering and accelerating their science. These software ecosystems comprise reusable software components and frameworks along with a highly-capable workforce. This workforce both uses as well as contributes to this software thus sustaining the ecosystem.

The Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program has been the flagship software program within ACI. This year, the SI2 program made major, multi-million dollar awards to establish two Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2) that will serve as long-term hubs for scientific software development, maintenance and education. The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) is a multi-institutional consortium that will increase the capabilities, number and sustainability of science gateways — mobile or web-based applications that provide broad access to the nation’s shared cyberinfrastructure to scientists and citizens alike.

This talk seeks to present an overview of ACIs programs, in particular its software programs, with a focus on the special role of gateways and the SGCI.