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Streamlining data delivery: How ETHZ SwissCAT+ uses Renku to let clients focus on science, not setup

· 3 min read
Erwin Lam
Senior Scientist, ETHZ SwissCAT+
Kourosh Shariat
ML Engineer, ETHZ SwissCAT+
Laura Kinkead
Laura Kinkead
Renku Product Manager

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As one of the projects within the first SDSC national call, ETHZ SwissCAT+ teamed up with the SDSC to utilize their Renku platform to unite data, code and compute in their OpenCatData project. In this blog post we describe how ETHZ SwissCAT+ fully utilizes the features that Renku offers to augment how data can be effectively shared across different parties.

ETHZ SwissCAT+'s Challenge​

ETHZ SwissCAT+ is a technology platform that provides services to researchers in the field of catalysis. At ETHZ SwissCAT+, traditional catalysis research is complemented with high-throughput experimentation, automation and artificial intelligence thereby generating large amounts of data. With a diverse user base from various academic institutions and companies nationally and internationally, ETHZ SwissCAT+ faces the challenge to effectively communicate and share the obtained experimental data with their user base.

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Renku Platform as Solution​

Renku offers an ideal platform to overcome this challenge where it allows to connect:

  • Data created from the instruments at ETHZ SwissCAT+,
  • Data processing tools developed at ETHZ SwissCAT+
  • Compute resources to deploy the data processing tools

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Data management Integration to Renku​

Data generated at ETHZ SwissCAT+ are stored in a data repository (for example polybox) and codes are located on a git repository. A Renku project can be created that connects the data and the code and uses the cloud resources provided by the Renku platform to deploy them. With a single Renku project, multiple sessions can be created for accessing data and code resources in various combinations and with different visualization and analysis tools. Renku offers the possibility to create templates to further speed up the creation of new Renku projects.

Previously, users were responsible for setting up their own computational environment for reviewing the data and code results provided by ETHZ SwissCAT+. Now with Renku, they only need to create a user account and be granted the access rights to their data and the processing tools, and they can launch interactive Renku sessions directly in the browser.

Catalysis Performance & Characterization Data Visualization​

So far three primary session templates have been implemented at ETHZ SwissCAT+. Each session is used in combinations with different data sources and creates interactive visualization dashboards to visualize results from:

  • Catalyst testing
  • Thermogravimetric analysis
  • Gas adsorption/desorption

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Each session comes with its tailored data processing tools. For example, catalyst testing data can be aggregated and filtered, gas adsorption/desorption data are further fitted using various mathematical models to extract descriptors from the data, and thermogravimetric analysis data can be processed to obtain integrated areas, peak maximum etc from their sequential data.

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Summary​

Renku has significantly enhanced the user experience for the groups that are requesting services provided by ETHZ SwissCAT+ which faces the challenge in sharing large amounts of diverse data to multiple users. In the wake of big data and open science, Renku offers the ideal and timely platform for this purpose. Check out some public Renku projects created by ETHZ SwissCAT+:

Want to learn more about how Renku can help democratize access to your research data? Explore RenkuLab or contact our team to discuss your use case.