OneSciencePlace (OSP) is a research cyberinfrastructure platform led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and collaboratively developed with partners at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). It was conceived as a modern, composable framework in response to lessons drawn from two decades of science gateway development.

The platform's purpose is to make sustainable, browser-based research computing accessible to research groups, instructors, and communities at any scale, without requiring each project to build its own infrastructure from scratch.

Mission

Ease of computing should be available to all faculty, students, and communities, not just those who can afford a team of web engineers. OneSciencePlace removes the operational and engineering barriers to delivering science gateways, HPC portals, and data repositories — so the teams building them and the people using them can both focus on the science.

Origin

How OneSciencePlace started

OneSciencePlace originated in the work of the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI), an NSF-funded program (2017–2022) that supported the science gateway community and studied the limits of existing gateway architectures. SGCI's engagement with dozens of gateway projects revealed a recurring pattern: domain-specific gateways achieved real community impact, but were expensive to maintain, slow to evolve, and difficult to generalize.

Based on these findings, NSF recommended that SGCI initiate the design of a modern, modular framework. OneSciencePlace was conceived in direct response to that recommendation — not as an extension of earlier systems, but as a synthesis of what each had taught.

  • HUBzero and nanoHUB — content-centered design and community model
  • CIPRES — application user interface builder and parameter-rich workflows
  • Apache Airavata — hosted platform model, workflow execution, and distributed orchestration
  • Tapis — API-driven compute and data integration
  • SeedMeLab — FAIR-ready data sharing, metadata, and visualization. SeedMeLab's data sharing and metadata system now forms the foundation of OSP's data module — SeedMeLab is part of OneSciencePlace.

The project's lead had firsthand operational experience running HUBzero at SDSC, supporting research communities on that platform over many years. Earlier attempts to modernize HUBzero through refactoring had revealed the limits of evolving a tightly coupled legacy architecture. When the project's lead assumed leadership of HUBzero, those experiences — combined with NSF guidance and SGCI's findings — motivated a clean architectural rethinking. OneSciencePlace embraced open standards, modular integration, and user-space deployment, allowing research groups and institutions to operate gateways without privileged access or dedicated infrastructure staff.

The CIPRES Science Gateway team recognized OSP's architectural direction early and committed to evaluate migrating its gateway. Over two dozen CIPRES applications were successfully ported to OSP, validating the platform's ability to host complex, parameter-rich workflows. CIPRES itself concluded upon completion of its award, but its migration experience provided critical validation for OSP's modular and extensible design.

In parallel, the Quakeworx earthquake simulation gateway — developed in collaboration with the Southern California Earthquake Center, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography — has served as both a science driver and demonstrator for OSP, validating its application to large-scale, multi-institutional research across heterogeneous computing environments.

OneSciencePlace originated at SDSC, where SGCI was led. When the project's lead moved from SDSC to UCLA, the leadership and host institution moved with him. SDSC and TACC, both involved from OSP's earliest stages, remained core development partners. Today OneSciencePlace is led by UCLA and collaboratively developed with partners at SDSC and TACC.

Building on 25 years of NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure
HUBzero·SeedMeLab·CIPRES·Apache Airavata·Tapis
How we approach the work

Design principles

These are the principles the team returned to when technical decisions got hard. They reflect what we have learned from decades of operating research infrastructure and what we have decided matters most for keeping OneSciencePlace useful over the long term.

Composable
Each deployment adopts only the components it needs — apps, data, publishing, identity, content management. Streamlined for the project at hand, expandable as needs grow.
Content-centric
Applications, systems, publications, data, and documentation are all treated as searchable, manageable content within a unified platform — not as separate systems with their own tooling.
Designed for users at any skill level
User experience drives design choices. The no-code form builder, browser-first interface, and contextual documentation aim to make research computing approachable to anyone whose work depends on it.
Built to last
Technology choices favor mature open-source components, with the goal that the platform remains maintainable and extensible for at least a decade.
Team

Core team

OneSciencePlace is developed by teams at three institutions, with leadership at UCLA.

OARC (Office of Advanced Research Computing), UCLA
Amit Chourasia (Lead) · Andrew Browning · Anthony Doolan, Benjamin Winjum · Jerome Ronquillo · Jerry Huang · Shao-Ching Huang
SDSC, UCSD
Choonhan Youn (Lead) · with the SDSC Research Data Services team
TACC, UT Austin
Joe Stubbs (Lead) · Anagha Jamthe · Christian Garcia · Dan Vernon · Kevin Price · Mike Packard · Steve Black
Collaborators

Science collaborators

Partners on the Quakeworx seismology gateway, OneSciencePlace's first deployment.

USC (University of Southern California)
Yehuda Ben-Zion (Lead) · Akash Bhatthal · Fabio Silva · Philip J. Maechling
UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Ahmed Elbanna (Lead) · Chunhui Zhao · Napat Tainpakdipat
SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography), UCSD
Alice Agnes-Gabriel (Lead) · David May · Bar Oryan · Jeena Yun · Fabian Kutschera
Foundational contributors

Earlier contributors and platform foundations

OneSciencePlace draws on foundational work from collaborators at SDSC, Indiana University, and Purdue University. Their contributions shaped the platform's initial architecture and design philosophy.

SDSC, UCSD
Claire Stirm · David Benham · Ilya Shunko · Jeanette Sperhac · Jesse Woo · Mark Zhuang · Mike Zentner · Mona Wong · Nicholas Kisseberth · Pascal Meunier · Paul Hoover · Rich Wellner · Scott Sakai · Steve Clark · Subhash Ramesh · Siddharth Satyam (student)
TACC, UT Austin
Maytal Dahan · Rick Cardone 
Indiana University
Marlon Pierce (Lead) · Suresh Maru · Students: Amol Sangar · Dinuka DeSilva · Gaurav Nikam · Shivam Balaji · Simran Harshverdhan · Ujjwal Dubey · Vaibhav Vishwanath
Purdue University
Paul Parsons (Lead) · Students: Ali Baigelenov · Ishaan Dandia · Raza Khawaja
Funding acknowledgment

This work was funded by the National Science Foundation through the Science Gateways Community Institute (award 1547611) and the Quakeworx project (awards 2311206, 2311207, 2311208). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.