WHAT IS CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE?

The National Science Foundation defines Cyberinfrastructure (CI) as:

The comprehensive infrastructure needed to capitalize on dramatic advances in information technology has been termed cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure integrates hardware for computing, data and networks, digitally-enabled sensors, observatories and experimental facilities, and an interoperable suite of software and middleware services and tools. Investments in interdisciplinary teams and cyberinfrastructure professionals with expertise in algorithm development, system operations, and applications development are also essential to exploit the full power of cyberinfrastructure to create, disseminate, and preserve scientific data, information, and knowledge. (NSF, July 20, 2006, Version 7.1)

RIT is playing a leadership role in support of the NSF goals to:

• Develop a human-centered CI that is driven by science and engineering
• Provide the science and engineering communities with world-class CI tools and services, including those focused on: high performance computing; data, data analysis and visualization; cyber-services and virtual organizations; and, learning and workforce development
• Develop a sustainable CI that is secure, efficient, reliable, accessible, usable, and interoperable, and which evolves as an infrastructure for conducting science and engineering research and education (NSF, July 20, 2006, Version 7.1)

In order to accomplish these goals, our Ph.D. curriculum facilitates and maintains intra- and inter-disciplinary collaboration among students and faculty across various disciplines within the College and RIT.

The Intra-disciplinary scope encompasses fundamental concepts across the entire discipline of computing and information sciences. These components are grouped into three knowledge specialty areas (the three I's), namely interaction, infrastructure, and informatics.

Interaction is the combined action of two or more entities (human or computational) that both affect one another and work together when facilitated by technology. Interaction in turn encompasses several subtopics relating to how people and technology interact and interface. There are several common threads that weave through all of the areas, many of them relying heavily and building upon foundations in the social, cognitive, and behavioral sciences with an emphasis on understanding human phenomena and social/organizational phenomena. To some extent, these fields follow an engineering approach to the design of interactions in which solutions are based on rules and principles derived from research and practice. From this perspective, solutions can be measured and evaluated against goals and intended outcomes. However, while efficiency and effectiveness are often the watchwords of these fields in practice, this is also where science meets art in computing, and creative design and sensitivity to human needs and aesthetics are critical.

Infrastructure is related to hardware, software (both system software and applications), communications technology, and their integration with computing systems through applications. The focus is on the best organization of these elements to provide optimal architectural solutions. It includes, on the hardware side, system-level design (e.g., for system-on-a-chip solutions) and their building block components. One perspective covers all aspects of systems and applications software development, including specification and design languages and standards; validation and prototyping, and multi-dimensional Quality-of-Service management; software product lines, model-driven architectures, component-based development, and domain-specific languages; and project estimation, tracking and oversight. The communications perspective includes sensor networks and protocols, as well as active networks, wireless networks, mobile networks, configurable networks, and high speed networks; as well as, network security and privacy, quality of service, reliability, service discovery, and integration and interworking across heterogeneous networks. At the system level there are issues related to conformance and certification; system dependability, fault tolerance, verifiable adaptability, and reconfigurable systems; real-time, self-adaptive, self-organizing, autonomic systems.

Informatics is the study of computational/algorithmic techniques applied to the management and understanding of data-intensive systems. It focuses on the capture, storage, processing, analysis, and interpretation of data. Topics include primarily algorithms, complexity, and discovery informatics. Data storage and processing require investigation into tools and techniques for modeling, storage, and retrieval. Analysis and understanding require the development of tools and techniques for the symbolic modeling, simulation, and visualization of data. The increased complexity of managing vast amounts of data requires a better understanding of the fundamentals of computation. These fundamentals include complexity theory to determine the inherent limits of computation, communication, cryptography, and the design and analysis of algorithms to obtain optimal solutions within the limits identified.

The Inter-disciplinary context interaction between computing and non-computing disciplines, or areas of domain-specific computing, in science, engineering, arts, humanities, and business. By incorporating domain-specific computing, following the philosophy of use-inspired research, the research conducted in this Ph.D. program will apply computing and information science principles to the solution of multidisciplinary problems in application domains that lie outside of the scope of the traditional computing discipline. A major focus of this research will be the development of coherent, domain-specific computing environments collectively known as cyberinfrastructure. The research requirement will incorporate fundamental concepts in cyberinfrastructure necessary for understanding the problems commonly encountered in advancing scientific discovery and product development in cross-disciplinary domains.