Science In the Cloud (SIC): A use case in MRI Connectomics

TL;DR

This paper introduces 'Science In the Cloud' (SIC), a framework leveraging cloud technologies and containers to facilitate reproducible, extensible, and accessible scientific research, demonstrated through MRI connectomics.

Contribution

It proposes a novel cloud-based model that enhances reproducibility and extensibility in scientific research using existing standards and containerization technologies.

Findings

Demonstrated cloud-based MRI connectomics analysis

Enabled interactive web services for scientific data

Improved reproducibility and extensibility of results

Abstract

Modern technologies are enabling scientists to collect extraordinary amounts of complex and sophisticated data across a huge range of scales like never before. With this onslaught of data, we can allow the focal point to shift towards answering the question of how we can analyze and understand the massive amounts of data in front of us. Unfortunately, lack of standardized sharing mechanisms and practices often make reproducing or extending scientific results very difficult. With the creation of data organization structures and tools which drastically improve code portability, we now have the opportunity to design such a framework for communicating extensible scientific discoveries. Our proposed solution leverages these existing technologies and standards, and provides an accessible and extensible model for reproducible research, called "science in the cloud" (sic). Exploiting scientific containers, cloud computing and cloud data services, we show the capability to launch a computer in the cloud and run a web service which enables intimate interaction with the tools and data presented. We hope this model will inspire the community to produce reproducible and, importantly, extensible results which will enable us to collectively accelerate the rate at which scientific breakthroughs are discovered, replicated, and extended.