NACSE Research Projects
NACSE engages in collaborative research with communities of scientists or engineers. Projects focus on making scientific data and software more useful, and understandable, to diverse audiences - including research collaborators, scientists in other fields, students, and the general public. Current projects fall into five general areas.
Linking Maps and Data
Connecting data and maps can bring new insight and understanding to very large, complex data sets. NACSE interfaces make it possible for users to explore geographical data more intuitively and productively, by integrating databases with familiar methods of manipulating maps.
Scientific Data for Multiple Audiences
The usefulness of a scientific database can be increased dramatically by adding tools so that users can access the data in ways that are most "natural" for their expertise and interests. NACSE develops interfaces that give multiple "personalities" to research data, making it appealing to different types of audiences.
Community Portals
Researchers working on different aspects of a project or discipline have the need to share results, view and comment on each other's progress, and collaborate from distant locations. NACSE works with various scientific groups to develop web-based portals where users can jointly develop experiments, computational models, and data repositories.
Remote Participation
Large, expensive, and unique experimental equipment is needed for many types of scientific and engineering research. Not all institutions have such facilities, nor is it always possible to travel to a distant location to use one-of-a-kind equipment. NACSE develops software that allows scientists to participate in experiments from their own institutions.