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Is HUBzero for me?


HUBzero can be an excellent fit if you are looking to establish a new web site for a research group or project. To help you decide if it is, we list below some common use case scenarios and HUBzero solutions for each. If any (or several) look familiar, HUBzero is a definite possibility. Contact us, and we'd be happy to help you in the decision process.

You have a web site that is difficult to maintain and extend. A new project comes in, and you now need to quickly add new functionality, for instance allow users to be able to order tissue cultures from your lab. You do not have time, funding, nor people to do custom code development. Show how HUBzero can help.

You are looking to set up a collaboration space for a large, international project. There are multiple user groups and each needs its own space to share files, wiki, discussion forum, etc., and the group leaders need to be able to add or subtract users. It would also help if you could configure multiple authentication sources. Show how HUBzero can help.

You need to build an online repository of digital resources. It will store documents, images, videos, presentations, etc. Resources will be contributed by people from all over the world and will need categories, custom metadata, and license attribution before being published via the web. Show how HUBzero can help.

You need an online support system for a project. You need to be able to track problems, provide FAQs, a place for user community to interact, and a mechanism for feedback, etc. Show how HUBzero can help.

You have a simulation code you want to web-enable. You use it as a tool daily in your research but find it inconvenient and slow to use (for instance to analyze a textual table or plot results). Your productivity could increase if the tool were more interactive and available over the web. Show how HUBzero can help.

You do presentations and use a graphical Linux application to teach a class. Students wishing to access class material after class can use the recorded lecture, but it difficult to download over slow connections. The application is also tricky to install individually on their personal or lab computers. You are looking to improve the entire process. Show how HUBzero can help.

You submit large, computational jobs to a local or national supercomputer. You currently use scripts you have written to do this and must log in to see the job status, manually transfer output files, etc. Show how HUBzero can help.


Here is a complete list of HUBzero features.

How are others using it?


HUBzero is being used in many settings and for a diverse set of activities. Examples include content management, online contributions, simulations, repositories, teaching, collaboration, and more as illustrated by the hubs below. (Here is a more comprehensive list.)

A sampling of hosted hubs


Nanohub (www.nanohub.org)


The grandday of them all, Nanohub hosts resources for research, education, and collaboration in computational nanoscience. It allows nanoresearchers and educators to contribute and share nanosimulation tools and other resources, deliver online courses and presentations, and provide a place for them to interact online.

NEES Hub (www.neeshug.org)


This hub uses HUBzero to advance the development of improvements and innovations in infrastructure design and construction practices to prevent or minimize damage during earthquakes.

cceHub (www.ccehub.org)


cceHub uses HUBzero to visualize complex cancer information to develop an overall intuition, from the development of the disease to the delivery of care, as a system that can be mathematically described and modeled using principles of systems engineering and novel statistical analyses.

c3Bio hub (c3bio.org)


This hub uses HUBzero to support the development of new technologies that maximize the energy and carbon efficiencies of biofuel production by the rational and synergistic design of both physical and chemical conversion processes and the biomass itself.

driNET Hub (drinet.org)


DRINET is a research environment for collecting and disseminating local to regional scale drought information. It employs HUBzero to publish models and tools, datasets, and training and educational materials to share with stakeholders who will benefit from comprehensive evaluation of causal factors of droughts.

ManufacturingHub (manufacturinghub.org)


ManufacturingHub uses HUBzero as a central point of contact for a wide range of manufacturing issues, linking existing and emerging businesses with researchers on the Purdue University campus. It also helps attract new businesses, allows faculty members collaborate within and across disciplines, assists industrial clients and furthers general knowledge in their fields.

vHub (vhub.org)


VHub uses HUBzero to provide online resource for collaboration in volcanology research and risk mitigation by allowing users to share tools to model volcanic processes and analyze volcano data, to share teaching materials and workshops, etc., and to communicate with other members of the volcanology community and with members of the educational and stakeholder communities.

... and open source hubs


Desktop to Petascale Hub (www.desktop2petascale.org)


This hub uses HUBzero to host resources for research, education, and collaboration in computational science.

CTSA2Community.org (www.ctsa2community.org)


This hub uses HUBzero's resource contribution component to build a repository where community engagement programs nationwide share ideas, experiences, and best practices. Users upload documents, presentations, etc., enter metadata fields customized for this project, and browse or search the resources publicly.

Distributed Drug Discovery Hub (d3hub.org)


The Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) project is using HUBzero to build a site to disseminate information, coordinate and facilitate research and educational collaborations, and publish structures of molecules of interest in the drug discovery process.

Project Bamboo (projectbamboo.org)


Project Bamboo is using HUBzero to develop technologies that allow librarians and technologists to better support humanities scholarship across institutions, create shared library applications (for example a page turner) for the curation and exploration of widely distributed content collections using the HUBzero tools infrastructure.

Ethics Core Hub (nationalethicscenter.org)


The Ethics CORE Digital Library brings together information on best practices in research, ethics instruction and responding to ethical problems that arise in research and professional life.

Trust-Hub (trust-hub.org)


Trust-Hub provides the community with a forum to exchange ideas, circuits, platforms, tools, and resources about the hardware security and trust area.

Qatar Computing Research Institute Madad Hub (qcrimadad.org)


This site uses HUBzero to provide a resource for research, education and collaboration. It hosts various resources which help users learn about their science area, including Online Presentations, Courses, Learning Modules, Animations, Teaching Materials, and simulation tools. These resources come from contributors, and are used by visitors from all over the world.

The Indiana CTSI Hub (www.indianactsi.org)


The central web site for a multi-institutional, biomedical research institute, the CTSI Hub uses HUBzero to manage content, send enewsletters, receive and share user contributions, etc., and leverages HUBzero core functions, existing open source Joomla! extensions, and the Joomla! API to add custom functionalities. It also supports federated authentication and integrates external applications with HUBzero via delegated authentication.

The Chicago HUB (chicagohubproject.org)


This hub uses the HUBZero resource contributions functionality to support a study of dynamic interactions between biodiversity conservation, ecosystem processes, and human well being in urban landscapes.

Adapt Hub (adapt.nd.edu)


The Adapt hub is a resource for research, education, and collaboration in the area of adaptation and climate change. It uses HUBzero to provide tools for biological simulation, searchable clearinghouses of legal information, and dissemination of emerging opinion from experts on the benefits and risks of adaptation.

Metastudio.org (www.metastudio.org)


Metastudio uses HUBzero as a vehicle for establishing collaboration among students, teachers, researchers or anyone else interested. HUBzero is used as a repository of educational resources, including publications, teaching materials, and more.

InvertNet hub (invertnet.org)


InvertNet uses HUBzero as a platform for research and education on the biodiversity of invertebrate animals, such as terrestrial and freshwater aquatic arthropods (insects and related groups). It gives users access to 22 collections of 55 million detailed images of specimens of particular species and their associated data labels, and serves as a model, applicable to other kinds of biological collections, for the use of efficient, computer-assisted procedures to increase the speed and accuracy of collection data capture.