Collaborating Across the Miles

In today's scientific environment scientists can no longer work in isolated laboratories. The problems being studied require experts from several fields to combine their talents. The instruments used to gather scientific data are expensive and difficult to build so there are only a few in the world. The Internet connectivity and the powerful desktop workstations available today provide the potential to create collaboration tools and allow scientists to collaborate across the miles and access instruments remotely. The DOE 2000 program sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) is developing new technologies and integrating existing technologies to create a software environment that allows collaboratories to become a reality. The DOE 2000 program is composed of two pilot programs putting collaboratories into practice and five research and development projects developing some of the tools required to complete the collaboratory environment that were not already available. These technologies include videoconferencing over the Internet, electronic notebooks, shared visualization, security infrastructure, floor control, and session management. Much of this work is in conjunction with other DOE and non-DOE development efforts. This paper describes the tools and technologies available today and some of the tools being developed to provide collaboration capabilities. Through collaboratories we are changing the way scientific experiments are carried out and the way scientists work together.