Introducing The Neuroscience Gateway

Last few decades have seen the emergence of computational neuroscience as a mature field where researchers are interested in modeling complex and large neuronal systems and require access to high performance computing machines and associated cyberinfrastructure to manage computational workflow and data. The neuronal simulation tools, used in this research field, are also implemented for parallel computers and suitable for high performance computing machines. But using these tools on complex high performance computing machines remain a challenge due to issues with acquiring computer time on these machines located at national supercomputer centers, dealing with complex user interface of these machines, dealing with data management and retrieval. The Neuroscience Gateway is being developed to alleviate all of these barriers to entry for computational neuroscientist. It hides or eliminates, from the point of view of the users, all the administrative and technical barriers and makes parallel neuronal simulation tools easily available and accessible on complex high performance computing machines and handles the running of jobs and data management and retrieval. This paper describes the architecture it is based on, how it is implemented, and how users can use this for computational neuroscience research using high performance computing at the back end.