The NSF Mid-Scale is about the design of an instrument to support research. We propose to build an instrument to access or connect researchers and their research instruments, data sources, and associated computational capabilities through federation --, a software and hardware defined “federated collaboratory,” designed to simplify multi-campus collaborations and partnerships that advance the frontiers of research and innovation.

Realizing the vision of the federated collaboratories will require the development of many layers of abstractions ranging from hardware, networking, federation architecture, scientific workflows, and domain-specific models and tools to enable collaborative discovery. In preparation for upcoming workshops focused on gathering information to be included in the ERN Mid-Scale preproposal, this session will be an ERN community forum to discuss what the “federated collaboratory” might look like from both a hardware and software perspective as well as what federation should look like as we strive for a seamless collaborative sharing experience. Another goal of the session is to start identifying an ERN technical team who will lead the architecting/federating/software strategies for the Mid-Scale proposal.