ERN community activities and projects have produced an array of publications and reports available here for your review.
April 23, 2025
Virtual Event
The virtual Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) Summit 2025 provided a forum to share information by industry, domain researchers, and CI professionals on the impacts Advanced Technologies, Quantum, AI, and Workforce Development are having in the research community, and included open discussions and perspectives from those participating in the Summit. The Summit 2025 report provides a complete summary and analysis of the event.
PEARC'24
Many smaller and under-resourced institutions, including MSIs, HSIs, HBCUs, and EPSCoR institutions, are engaged in significant science research and education and recognize the value of enhanced access to advanced computing resources. Collaborations, shared resources, and expertise from local, regional, and national levels can substantially support their internal efforts. The Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) Broadening the Reach (BTR) working group is actively learning from these institutions on how to better support their needs. The group’s findings and recommendations, derived from community engagement, will be shared, as part of the NSF-sponsored CC*CRIA grant OAC-2018927.
PEARC'24 Best Short Paper - Systems and Systems Software Track
The Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) CryoEM Remote Instrument Access Pilot Project addresses the challenges and barriers facing the transition of instrument-driven science self-contained islands to federated wide-area internet accessible instruments. This project’s goal is to facilitate cross-institutional infrastructure sharing at the interface of computing and electron microscopy through a federated web portal to access scientific instruments and generate workflows utilizing edge computing paired with advanced computing and real-time monitoring for experimental parameter adjustments and decision making. The intent is to foster team science and scientific innovation, with emphasis on under-represented and under-resourced institutions, through the democratization of scientific instruments. This paper presents a short summary some of the latest challenges encountered with this active project, creating a FABRIC Cloudlet and incorporating Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s Bridges-2 as an advanced computing option.
April 11-12, 2024
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
The Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) Summit gave the scientific and cyberinfrastructure research community an opportunity to come together and discuss ERN accomplishments, successes, and challenges related to projects, collaborations and partnerships, and ERN Working Groups’ efforts.
Open OnDemand Use Case - May 10, 2023
The ERN Cryo-EM Federated Instrument Pilot Project, in partnership with Rutgers University, is creating a portal that enables the remote control of cryo-electron microscopes and analysis of electron microscopy data. ERN is developing the portal by building upon the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s (OSC) remote high performance computing (HPC) platform, Open OnDemand.
PEARC'22 Best Short Paper - Systems and Systems Software Track
Feedback and survey data collected from hundreds of participants of the Ecosystem for Research Networking (formerly Eastern Regional Network) series of NSF (OAC-2018927) funded community outreach meetings and workshops revealed that Structural Biology Instrument driven science is being forced to transition from self-contained islands to federated wide-area internet accessible instruments. This paper discusses phase 1 of the active ERN CryoEM Federated Instrument Pilot project whose goal is to facilitate inter-institutional collaboration at the interface of computing and electron microscopy through the implementation of the ERN Federated OpenCI Lab’s Instrument CI Cloudlet design. The conclusion will be a web-based portal leveraging federated access to the instrument, workflows utilizing edge computing in conjunction with cloud computing, along with real-time monitoring for experimental parameter adjustments and decisions. The intention is to foster team science and scientific innovation, with emphasis on under-represented and under-resourced institutions, through the democratization of these scientific instruments.
2022 IEEE/ACM Annual Workshop on Large-scale Experiment-in-the-Loop Computing (XLOOP)
The Ecosystem for Research Networking (ERN) CryoEM Remote Instrument Pilot Project was launched in response to feedback and survey data collected from hundreds of participants of the ERN series of NSF (OAC-2018927) funded community outreach events revealing that Structural Biology instrument driven science is being forced to transition from self-contained islands to federated wide-area internet accessible instruments. Its goal is to facilitate multi-institutional collaboration at the interface of computing and electron microscopy through the implementation of the ERN Federated OpenCI Lab’s Instrument CI Cloudlet design. The conclusion will be a web-based portal leveraging federated access to the instrument, workflows utilizing edge computing in conjunction with cloud computing and real-time monitoring for experimental parameter adjustments and decisions. The intention is to foster team science and scientific innovation, with emphasis on under-represented and under-resourced institutions, through the democratization of these scientific instruments. This paper discusses the latest Phase 1 deployment efforts
PEARC'21
Many smaller, mid-sized and under-resourced campuses, including MSIs, HSIs, HBCUs and EPSCoR institutions, have compelling science research and education activities along with an awareness of the benefits associated with better access to cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources. These schools can benefit greatly from resources and expertise to augment their in-house efforts. The Eastern Regional Network's (ERN) Broadening the Reach (BTR) working group is addressing this by focusing on learning directly from the under-resourced academic institutions in the region on how best to support them for research collaboration and advanced computing requirements. ERN BTR findings and recommendations will be shared based on engagement with the community, including workshop and survey results, as part of the NSF sponsored CC*CRIA: The Eastern Regional Network Award OAC-2018927.
PEARC'21
In this paper we present the key collaboration challenges and recommendations identified by targeted research communities during the Eastern Regional Network (ERN) [7] Architecture and Federation Virtual Workshop[6], for validation of the base design of the ERN Federated OpenCI Labs collaborative infrastructure model. The workshop was designed to stimulate open discussions surrounding key aspects of collaborative scientific research and workflows. A brief summary of the key data gathered is provided here. The findings from this workshop have led to a re-evaluation of the design of ERN Federated OpenCI Labs infrastructure.