New collaboration between scientists at the five U.S. Department of Energy light source facilities will develop flexible software to easily process big data.
Light source facilities are tackling some of today’s biggest scientific challenges, from designing new quantum materials to revealing protein structures. But as these facilities continue to become more technologically advanced, processing the wealth of data they produce has become a challenge of its own. By 2028, the five U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science light sources, will produce data at the exabyte scale, or on the order of billions of gigabytes, each year. Now, scientists have come together to develop synergistic software to solve that challenge.
With funding from DOE for a two-year pilot program, scientists from the five light sources have formed a Data Solution Task Force that will demonstrate, build, and implement software, cyberinfrastructure, and algorithms that address universal needs between all five facilities. These needs range from real-time data analysis capabilities to data storage and archival resources.
“It is exciting to see the progress that is being made by all the light sources working together to produce solutions that will be deployed across the whole DOE complex,” said Stuart Campbell, leader of the data acquisition, management and analysis group at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.
>Read more on the NSLS-II at Brookhaven National Lab
>Explore the other member facilities of the task force and read about their latest science news: Advanced Light Source (ALS), Advanced Photon Source (APS), Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).
Image: Members of the task force met at NSLS-II for a project kickoff meeting in August of 2019.