Opportunities for Team Science Enabled by Integrated User Facilities
Authors:
Yasuo Yoshikuni* ([email protected], PI)
Institutions:
DOE Joint Genome Institute
Goals
Ongoing efforts among DOE’s user facilities offer their unique and large-scale capabilities collaboratively and interactively to users to significantly advance their science programs.
Abstract
The goal of the Biological and Environmental Research program is to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, Earth, and environmental systems with the aim of advancing the nation’s energy and infrastructure security. To pursue this goal, team science—collaborations among experts in diverse research areas that lead to multidisciplinary projects— is indispensable. The roles of DOE user facilities, which offer unique and powerful resources for such research projects, are evolving, and expectations for the facilities are increasing. To respond to users’ needs, the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) initiated the Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) program in 2014. This collaboration has grown into a successful program, advancing more than 100 multidisciplinary projects to date. Similarly, new interfacility collaborations are becoming essential for cutting-edge transdisciplinary science. These collaborations include not only JGI and EMSL but also user resources for (1) BER structural biology and imaging at synchrotron and neutron facilities supported by DOE’s Basic Energy Sciences program and for (2) computing capabilities at the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program’s high-performance computing facilities.
To explore the need for the BER research community to combine genomic, functional, systems, biosystems design, structural, and computation approaches to advance their research, researchers performed various pilot programs to test the feasibility of offering the integrative capabilities to users and hosted workshops to better understand users’ needs. This report describes ongoing efforts among DOE user facilities to enable user research.
Image
Collaboration Between DOE User Facilities. Top left: Structural proteomics workflows. Discovering and engineering proteins with novel or desired functions is one opportunity and challenge identified during the breakout session. Top right: Building interactive and holistic cell models. Holistic cell models were identified as one challenge and opportunity during the breakout sessions. Bottom: Structure-informed discovery and design cycle. [Courtesy DOE Joint Genome Institute]
References
U.S. DOE. 2022. Genomes to Structure and Function Workshop Report 2022, OSTI ID 1959294. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. DOI:10.2172/1959294.
Funding Information
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is managed by the Regents of the University of California for DOE under contract DE-AC02-05CH1123.