Science gateways are web-based, community-developed interfaces that provide researchers with access to resources and tools
A science portal or science gateway is a community-developed set of tools, applications, and data that are integrated through a web-based portal or a suite of applications. They provide scientists with access to many of the tools used in cutting-edge research—telescopes, seismic shake tables, supercomputers, sky surveys, undersea sensors, and more. Such gateways connect often diverse resources and make them easily accessible in ways that save researchers and institutions both time and money.
A single portal or gateway can give thousands of users access to current, optimized versions of analysis codes at any time. Codes with a large user base can be used by thousands of scientists through a single installation, rather than through hundreds of local installations. Researchers can focus on their scientific goals without having to know how supercomputers and other data cyberinfrastructures work. Gateways also help foster collaborations and the exchange of ideas among researchers.
Science portals and gateways have shown tremendous growth in terms of the number of users, the number of processing hours used on HPC resources by the broader user community, and in the number of published research papers enabled. Gateways can also be readily used for teaching classes, workshops, and tutorials without having to set up codes on HPC resources, or create new accounts for students/attendees.
SDSC provides science gateway services through the Stack Science Division, and the CICORE Division via the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Development (ACID) lab.
