PolyHub Mandate

PolyHub was established November 15, 2007 through a grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a prototype Engineering Virtual Organization for the advancement of polymer physics and dynamics. Under this mandate, goals of the project are

  1. To store and catalog extensive simulation data for future use by all institutions within the EVO, using hyper-array structuring and strong management protocols;
  2. To foster international and interdisciplinary collaboration as a model for future engineering virtual organizations, and to allow dramatic advances of knowledge and expertise to be achieved through synergistic combinations of researchers on multiple continents;
  3. To build and implement a virtual hub of information and communication, called PolyHub, for the immediate dissemination of new and groundbreaking research methodologies and results;
  4. To allow shared usage of experimental and simulation data by PolyHub affiliates, subject to reasonable proprieties and exclusivity periods;
  5. To augment computational resources at allied institutions, either through direct usage of PolyHub resources or as a virtual load-leveler on designated network machines, whereby unused cycles at the host institution could be distributed to PolyHub users on an immediate basis, and then immediately returned to the host institution when needed. This would allow for maximum computational usage to be achieved over all spokes of the PolyHub network;
  6. To allow and facilitate the framework development as necessary to meet the demands of polymer physics through strategic combinations of algorithmic and simulation expertise to produce more efficient, more realistic, and more predictive simulations;
  7. To provide a standard suite of visualization and simulation tools to the community as a support service and as a means to facilitate compatibility between research groups;
  8. To educate students in the subject area of polymer physics and dynamics through interdisciplinary and intercultural interactions conducted virtually using open-source video conferencing utilities;
  9. To establish PolyHub as a member of the global Open Science Grid.