The Evolving Role of NSF Software Programs and Software Gateways in a National Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem

Keynote presentation made at the Gateways 2016 conference on November 2, 2016. <div><br></div><div>Abstract: The Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI) seeks to encourage, support and incentivize its community to create a sustainable national scientific cyberinfrastructure ecosystem. In keeping with this intent ACI’s software programs seek to holistically promote **software-centric** ecosystems that are seen by stakeholder communities as their primary means of furthering and accelerating their science. These software ecosystems comprise reusable software components and frameworks along with a highly-capable workforce. This workforce both uses as well as contributes to this software thus sustaining the ecosystem.</div><div><br></div><div>The Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program has been the flagship software program within ACI. This year, the SI2 program made major, multi-million dollar awards to establish two Scientific Software Innovation Institutes (S2I2) that will serve as long-term hubs for scientific software development, maintenance and education. The Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) is a multi-institutional consortium that will increase the capabilities, number and sustainability of science gateways — mobile or web-based applications that provide broad access to the nation’s shared cyberinfrastructure to scientists and citizens alike.</div><div><br></div><div>This talk seeks to present an overview of ACIs programs, in particular its software programs, with a focus on the special role of gateways and the SGCI.