EAGER: An Actor-Network Investigation of the XSEDE Project

Cyberinfrastructure is defined as an ecosystem that includes people, software, networks, data, and compute capabilities. While this term commonly refers to supercomputers, this definition places “people” first. XSEDE, the eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, is the largest NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure support and coordination activity.

XSEDE has helped researchers find the computing power they need and the assistance essential to making it work, with a large range of associated services. This research project examines the factors that motivate participation in XSEDE. It elucidates the specific methods XSEDE and NSF use to balance cooperation, collaboration, and competition, and it investigates how XSEDE has encouraged interactions across divisions, creating a single, coherent organization.

To study these methods, the project uses Actor-Network Theory, a social science approach that considers social structures to be formed by individuals operating through networks of relationships. This theory is used to understand how the project’s human elements interact with each other and with the organization as a whole. The project’s findings will provide insight into the design and governance for future organizations supporting cyberinfrastructure in the United States.

Importantly, this research will provide insight about how best to organize large-scale collaborative projects and services. As a result, the study will increase the extent to which structure, leadership, and management of large cyberinfrastructure projects may be based on sound sociological science. Science and society alike will also benefit from the spread of diverse approaches to studying the formation, engagement, and maintenance of expansive scientific organizations.

The XSEDE project will end on August 31, 2022, offering a unique opportunity during the project’s final months to learn from the people who have enabled its function for the last decade. By studying XSEDE through the lens of Actor-Network Theory, this study will obtain, preserve, and disseminate information on what has made this organization successful in attracting and retaining talented staff and leaders, while also discerning participant views on what could be improved in future organizations.

By applying a well-known theoretical approach in a new situation, the project creates new knowledge that will improve understanding of large-scale cyberinfrastructure project function in ways that are important to federal funding agencies and the U.S. science and engineering community. The project will proceed through two rounds of interviews focused on the interactions and motivations of XSEDE participants, beginning with XSEDE leadership and key stakeholders and staff members who are employed directly in the organization’s various functions.

After this first round, the project will produce preliminary findings, which it will share openly with the XSEDE community while soliciting feedback. The second round of interviews will focus on verifying and validating findings among both previous and new interviewees. After this second round, we will revise the findings with community input, paying specific attention to the (mis)alignments between the two rounds of interviewing, looking for opportunities to triangulate the findings to develop a full, complex understanding of XSEDE.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.