Internet-Based 'Collaboratories' Help Scientists Work Together Researchers use the technology to share expensive equipment and to discuss their work By VINCENT KIERNAN Steven M. Wolinsky and Ashley T. Haase are trying to make scientific history by developing a vaccine for AIDS. Whether or not they succeed, they may reshape biomedical science in another way: Along with several colleagues, they will conduct their research in a "collaboratory" -- an Internet-based collaboration that will involve AIDS researchers at four Midwestern universities. ALSO SEE: How One 'Collaboratory' Was Set Up The AIDS collaboratory -- which relies on software and hardware to make remote collaboration possible -- will allow the researchers to work together easily even at a distance. Although it is still being established, it will eventually enable researchers at two locations to simultaneously examine and discuss an image produced by a microscope. Researchers at all four institutions will be able to participate in meetings and seminars remotely. "We're on the verge of a new educational adventure," says Mr. Wolinsky, an associate professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University's medical school. He is the principal investigator for the AIDS collaboratory, known as the Great Lakes Center for AIDS Research. The AIDS center, which is being financed by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, is only one of a burgeoning number of scientific-research projects that use collaboratory technology. The projects are also experiments in how to conduct research via the Internet, and they offer the possibility of cutting costs by allowing many researchers to share the use of expensive instruments. The Space Physics & Aeronomy Research Collaboratory, based at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, allows space physicists to band together to measure the Earth's ionosphere at many places at once, and in great detail -- all without having to leave their offices or laboratories. Montana State University at Bozeman is home to the Center for Computational Biology, through which researchers can use a sophisticated electron microscope in La Jolla, Cal., by remote control. And the University of California at San Francisco is the center of a collaboratory for studies of molecular structure. Researchers can use the collaboratory to study three-dimensional models of molecules as aids to developing new drugs. The arrangements permit frequent collaborations among researchers who otherwise probably would not be able to work together, because of distance, time constraints, or other difficulties, says Thomas A. Finholt, director of Michigan's Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work, which has participated in the development of several collaboratories, including both the space-physics and AIDS collaboratories. The space-physics system, one of the earliest and most sophisticated collaboratories, started in 1992 with the goal of giving researchers remote-control access to a single radar installation in Greenland that monitors the ionosphere. Since then, Mr. Finholt and his colleagues have gradually extended the system's capabilities and made it available to researchers on the World-Wide Web, which was not widely available when the project started. The system now allows a researcher to receive information, as it is recorded, from radar instruments on four satellites and in Massachusetts, Norway, Puerto Rico, and Peru. Moreover, a researcher can connect to a supercomputer to compare the data with simulations generated by several computerized models of the ionosphere, and scientists at different locations can communicate with one another in real time, through typed messages, to discuss the observations or to plan new ones. Initially, the system was known as the Upper Atmospheric Research Collaboratory. Last fall, the National Science Foundation awarded Michigan $2.4-million to expand the collaboratory even further. With a new name, the Space Physics & Aeronomy Research Collaboratory, its goal is to enable researchers to predict "space weather" -- essentially, what happens when charged particles from the Sun slam into the atmosphere or artificial satellites. Although controlling instruments from afar was one of the original goals of the space-physics collaboratory, it gradually has become clear to Mr. Finholt and his colleagues that researchers value the collaboratory more for giving them a venue for discussion and debate than because it lets them operate scientific instruments by remote control. So remote-control features, which were difficult to develop because of myriad differences in various radar systems, have been phased out. "The value came from the scientists' being able to talk about what they're seeing rather than being able to twist or turn some dials on the instrument," says Mr. Finholt. The setup allows many more researchers -- and their graduate students, and even undergraduates in some cases -- to participate in gathering information and thrashing out what it means, says Mr. Finholt. Mr. Wolinsky says that's exactly what he and his colleagues are seeking from the AIDS collaboratory: a way to pool the research capabilities of four institutions in different cities. For example, Mr. Wolinsky and his colleagues at Northwestern are skilled at conducting clinical trials, while Mr. Haase's co-workers at the University of Minnesota are particularly strong in fundamental immunology, Mr. Wolinsky says. The collaboratory also includes researchers at Michigan who are adept at techniques of gene transfer and scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who specialize in medical research using non-human primates. "Together, these really provide a unique set of strengths," Mr. Wolinsky says. "I think it will move the collaboration along more quickly," says Mr. Haase. Although researchers on different campuses can work together without using the Internet, such collaborations tend to be stunted, says Mr. Haase. "You're not going to be running down to Chicago every day," he says. If the AIDS collaboratory works well, it will give smaller universities -- which may have excellent researchers -- an opportunity to band together in an attempt to tackle major scientific problems, says Stephanie D. Teasley, an assistant research scientist at the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work. She is working with the AIDS researchers to develop their collaboratory. "In the past, you had to be somewhere big, with important people to knit together, to create a 'center,'" says Ms. Teasley. Collaboratories will allow smaller institutions to do the same thing, she says. "When people see that this is an effective way to go, it is going to create a major new paradigm of institutions' cooperating toward common goals," says Minnesota's Mr. Haase. Other institutions see it the same way. Jack Crow, a professor of physics at Florida State University, has been circulating a report that calls for the establishment of a $261-million collaboratory to study materials using nuclear magnetic-resonance-imaging technology. The report was signed by him and 17 other scientists. As envisioned by its champions, the National Magnetic Resonance Collaboratorium would consist of 12 nuclear magnetic-resonance spectrometers -- which are used to study the properties of materials based on their response to a powerful magnetic field -- located around the United States. Each facility would develop a unique expertise, and scientists could use any of the instruments over new high-capacity networks reserved for researchers. The collaboratorium, which would cost $23-million annually to operate, would enable researchers to make strides in areas as diverse as neuroscience and drug development, Mr. Crow says. The collaboratorium would help solve the problem of the rising cost of N.M.R. spectrometers by letting many scientists across the United States share just a few of them, says Mr. Crow. But challenges remain. "There are enormous claims made for new technologies," says Gary M. Olson, a professor of information who is interim dean of the School of Information at the University of Michigan. "But I can tell you from the front lines that the Internet is still a rough and ragged place," says Mr. Olson, who is an investigator in both the AIDS and space-physics collaboratories. The technology for controlling instruments remotely is still far from perfect, for example. Although the space-physics collaboratory could get by without remote-control features, systems such as the N.M.R. collaboratory can't -- even though each of the scientific instruments used in N.M.R. research is controlled by unique software and by a unique interface for connecting the software to the instrument, says Mr. Crow. As a result, he says, a scientist has to learn a different set of operating procedures every time he or she wants to use an instrument made by a different manufacturer. That could become a major handicap at a large, networked collaboratory in which a researcher might have as many as a dozen different spectrometers at his or her disposal, he says. One goal of the N.M.R. collaboratory, he adds, is to develop standardized software that would operate with any instrument regardless of its manufacturer. "Then when a scientist plugs into the center, it's like he's at home." Even if the technological hurdles to collaboratories can be overcome, however, there are bureaucratic and psychological challenges as well. John P. Miller, a professor of biology who is director of the Center for Computational Biology at Montana State, says that "an enlightened administrative attitude" in evaluating scholarship is required for collaborative work to succeed. He says, for instance, that he did not experience an enlightened attitude when he was a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley and was planning collaborative research with his wife, who also is a biologist. His dean objected, says Mr. Miller, because Mr. Miller was tenured while his wife did not yet have tenure, and the dean worried that collaborative research projects would make it difficult to evaluate her work. But administrators must move beyond such concerns, says Mr. Miller. "The way of the future is these virtual collaboratories," he says. Even if administrators come to embrace collaboratories, scientists will still have to balance the benefits of working together against the competitive nature of the research process. That competitive spirit could encourage researchers linked by a collaboratory to be less than frank with their colleagues at other institutions. AIDS research, in particular, is notoriously competitive. Michigan's Ms. Teasley says it remains to be seen whether the sophisticated electronic setup will lead scientists in the AIDS collaboratory to work together effectively. However, Mr. Wolinsky plays down the possibility of competition among the collaborators, noting that several of the researchers in the project have collaborated before, albeit at a distance. "We're simple Midwesterners," he says. http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A22