New Tool Automates Scientists’ Tasks and Aids Collaboration.

The advent of the World Wide Web brought a whole new world of data, tools, and online services within the reach of scientists. But this wealth of opportunity also brought a new set of challenges, with scientists becoming overwhelmed by the sheer volume and variety of resources. To overcome this problem, a team of UC researchers developed a user-friendly workflow tool that could organize and automate scientific tasks, helping scientists take full advantage of today’s complex software and Web services. Named Kepler, after the Ptolemy software on which it is built, the tool was part of the emerging cyberinfrastructure, or integrated technologies for doing today’s science. Kepler was the product of an open source collaboration initiated by researchers at SDSC and the Ecoinformatics Center at UC Santa Barbara, who were part of the Science Environment for Ecological Knowledge project, known as SEEK.