DEEDS:
a platform for shared data and computing that supports the entire research process

We offer the Digital Environment for Enabling Data-Driven Science (DEEDS) to scientific and engineering communities everywhere, as a full-service platform that provides end-to-end support for your research investigations.

DEEDS is a systematic, secure, reliable way to conduct your research, with powerful yet user-friendly interactive support for shared data, computing, and scientific workflows.

The design and development of DEEDS is a collaborative effort, bringing together scientists and engineers from chemistry (molecular dynamics, quantum chemistry), agriculture (ecotoxicoloy, forest biodiversity), electrical engineering (solar PV efficiency), civil engineering (bridge health monitoring, earthquake engineering), health and human services (nutrition science) and computer science (infrastructure, big data, high performance computing). The platform we developed supports research activities throughout the research investigation and is effective across science domains.

Why DEEDS ?

In research investigations, scientists and engineers carry out complex, long-running, team-shared activities involving the collection and integration of data, the execution of computational software, the analysis and visualization of data and software output, and the synthesis of results to produce conclusions. In most disciplines this process is done in an ad-hoc manner because existing IT platforms support only part of the investigative workflow. This means that data, computing, analysis, and outcomes reside in disconnected environments. The lack of continuity in the research process hinders it in many ways: the process is inefficient, difficult to share, and difficult to validate. It also compromises reproducibility of results and makes reuse and reinterpretation of data and algorithms more difficult.

With DEEDS ... research data, computing, and scientific workflows come together in datasets that you build, use and share across your entire investigation.

What are DEEDS datasets?

Research teams build and share DEEDS datasets using an interactive dashboard The dashboard provides full-featured services for the organization and structuring of research activities; the upload and classification of data; the extraction and assignment of metadata; research computing and statistical modeling -- including high-performance computing; the automatic capture of scientific workflows for data provenance and reproducibility; and the analysis and visualization of results.

• DATA: Upload, preserve, manage & explore data. Assign metadata and specify rules for metadata standards. Integrate scripts to automatically validate, curate, and check completeness of your data. Collected data for a dataset can consist of
  Files classified by type, format and use, including standard categories (reports, images, video, figures, data) and user-customizable categories such as sensor data, geospatial data, and protocols. DEEDS offers built-in applications to search, explore and visualize files by type and use.
  • Data Tables that represent hierarchical, multi-dimensional models for qualitative and quantitative measurements and other data. Data Tables can be customized, organized, re-organized, cloned, and annotated across the investigation lifecycle. Users can upload spreadsheets or interactively enter data to update data tables, including bulk updates. Data tables can be viewed, browsed, searched, filtered and downloaded.
  
  
• COMPUTING: Bring research computing code, statistical models, and other analysis tools into your dataset, where they can be launched from the DEEDS dashboard, connected to your data, executed (on HPC facilities if needed), and tracked. DEEDS automatically retrieves and uploads output back to the dataset with full annotation. Computing workflows are captured and displayed to link input --> algorithms --> output for data provenance, results traceability and reproducibility.
  
  
• ANALYSIS: Interactively search, explore, visualize your collected data and generated results. Use analytics to build ‘R data frames’ with selected data tables, then apply R-based statistical analysis and generate graphs using the DEEDS built-in toolkit. Create and share Jupyter notebooks.
  
  
• FAIR compliance: DEEDS guarantees adherence to the principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data management and stewardship for your research. DEEDS offers fine-grained access control as needed for your data and computing tools.
  
  

Funding

Our research is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. #1724728, CIF21 DIBBs: EI: Creating a Digital Environment for Enabling Data-Driven Science (DEEDS), awarded by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC), Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering. NSF awards $3.5 million 4-year grant to build powerful web platform for data-driven science.

Previous funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation under Grant No.1443027. DEEDS builds on the existing DataHub platform which designed to help researchers preserve and publish their data for discovery and exploration. DEEDS transformed DataHub from a data sharing platform to a full research support environment.

Contact Us

Principal Investigator, Co-investigators & Senior Personnel
Ann Christine Catlin acc@purdue.edu
Ashraf Alam alam@purdue.edu
Marisol Sepúlveda mssepulv@purdue.ed
Joseph Francisco frjoseph@sas.upenn.edu
Kathleen Hill Gallant hillgallant@purdue.edu
Chandima Hewa Nadungodage chewanad@purdue.edu