«Digital Lab» platform as an environment for scientific research and development at the Kurchatov Institute

The Kurchatov Complex of NBICS Nature-Like Technologies is focused on interdisciplinary research and development in the field of nano-, bio-, information, cognitive, socio-humanitarian sciences and technologies. The experimental basis of the NBICS complex is the Resource Centers operating in the mode of collective use by various scientific laboratories and containing modern equipment for conducting a wide range of scientific experiments. The processing and storage of the obtained experimental data is carried out on the supercomputer of the Computing Center, the use of which is also collective. Thus, there are problems of data exchange between different buildings, organizing their processing, analysis and orderly storage, as well as combining heterogeneous experimental data to obtain scientific results of a higher level. To solve these issues on the basis of the distributed modular platform «Digital Laboratory», an information and analytical environment was organized as a system that combines the scientific equipment of the Resource Centers, the supercomputer of the Computing Center, virtual machines and personal computers of scientific laboratories into a single virtual space, while organizing the exchange of data between various buildings, their processing, analysis and storage. The work with the system is carried out through the user web interface. At the request of researchers, each procedure for working with experimental data of a given type is implemented as an autonomous module of the «Digital Laboratory» platform. For example, the Module «Neuroimaging» for processing and analysis of fMRI / MRI experimental data of the human brain obtained on the tomograph of the Resource Center was put into operation and is successfully functioning. The use of this module makes the task of fMRI / MRI data analysis as simple as possible for the user, and also makes it possible to speed up the data processing many times over by parallelizing the computations on the supercomputer nodes. In addition to creating modules for working with experimental data, the system provides the ability to create modules for working with data of a different type. An example is the Module «Project Activity» for analyzing the effectiveness of scientific activities of research laboratories. The use of this system allows to optimize the work with experimental data in the course of scientific research due to the possibility of software implementation of the necessary procedures for their transfer, storage, processing and analysis.