A National Science Data Fabric to Democratize Data Access and Reusability

We are building a National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) that introduces a novel trans-disciplinary approach for integrated data delivery and access to shared storage, networking, computing, and educational resources. Such a data fabric has the potential to democratize data-driven scientific discovery across the growing data science community. In this BoF, we will engage the data science community to discuss the challenges and opportunities of the NSDF project and other similar efforts to connect an open network of institutions, including resource-disadvantaged institutions, and develop a federated testbed configurable for individual and shared scientific use. We will report on the NSDF pilot achievements aiming to develop such a data fabric, including a shared, modular, containerized data delivery environment that can take advantage of economies of scale to fill the missing middle in our current computational infrastructure. Currently, NSDF already builds a shared resource for equity in data access across a diversity of disciplines, institutions, and people; and embraces the motto of the Minority Serving Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC) of accomplishing together what we cannot do separately. In a setting including short talks and a panel discussion, this BoF will create opportunities for collaboration between the NSDF project and other similar efforts at the international level.