Societal challenges
Cloud platforms allow users to execute tasks directly from their web browser and are a key enabling technology not only for commerce but also for computational science. Research software is often developed by scientists with limited experience in (and time for) user interface design, which can make research software difficult to install and use for novices. When combined with the increasing complexity of scientific workflows (involving many steps and software packages), setting up a computational research environment becomes a major entry barrier. AiiDAlab is a web platform that enables computational scientists to package scientific workflows and computational environments and share them with their collaborators and peers.
Technical challenges
AiiDA is a workflow manager for computational science with a strong focus on provenance and performance. Through its flexible plugin infrastructure, it supports a wide range of simulation codes and makes them available for use through the Python programming language, and automatically records the full provenance of your simulation pipeline in a graph. AiiDAlab lets you run and manage AiiDA-powered workflows through tailored web applications in the browser. Use the App store to pick and install apps from the application registry or write your own in just a few lines of python using jupyter widgets and appmode. This service is supported by the MaX European Centre of Excellence, the MARVEL National Centre for Competence in Research, the European H2020 MarketPlace project, by swissuniversities as well by a number of other partners.
How EOSC can help and add value
Specific steps
- Integration with the EGI Check-in service
- Deploy the AiiDA lab instance on the EGI Federated Cloud
- Use of the AiiDA lab instance for a tutorial and support of at least 6 different simulation codes
- Onboarding of users, testing and scaling, provide apps to connect to HPC resources