Chatbot Guided Domain-science Knowledge Discovery in a Science Gateway Application

Neuroscientists are increasingly relying on high performance/throughput computing resources for experimentation on voluminous data, analysis and visualization at multiple neural levels. Though current science gateways provide access to computing resources, datasets and tools specific to the disciplines, neuroscientists require guided knowledge discovery at various levels to accomplish their research/education tasks. The guidance can help them to navigate them through relevant publications, tools, topic associations and cloud platform options as they accomplish important research and education activities. To address this need and to spur research productivity and rapid learning platform development, we present “OnTimeRecommend”, a novel recommender system that comprises of several integrated recommender modules through RESTful web services. We detail a neuroscience use case in a CyNeuro science gateway, and show how the OnTimeRecommend design can enable novice/expert user interfaces, as well as template-driven control of heterogeneous cloud resources.