ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic not only precipitated a digital revolution but also led to one of the largest scientific collaborative open-source initiatives. The EXaSCale smArt pLatform Against paThogEns for CoronaVirus (EXSCALATE4CoV) consortium, led by Dompé farmaceutici S.p.A., brought together 18 global organizations to counter international pandemics more rapidly and efficiently. The consortium also partnered with Nanome, an extended reality software company whose software facilitates the visualization, modification, and simulation of molecules via augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality applications. To characterize the molecular structure of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and to identify promising drug targets, the EXSCALATE4CoV team utilized methods such as homology modeling, molecular dynamics simulations, high-throughput virtual screening, docking, and other computational procedures. Nanome provided analysis of those computational procedures and supplied virtual reality headsets to help scientists better understand and interact with the molecular dynamics and key chemical interactions of SARS-CoV-2. Nanome's collaborative ideation platform enables scientific breakthroughs across research institutions in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and other diseases. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
Cybersecurity classes present challenging problems to engineering and computer science departments. Having to negotiate with overstretched IT departments to set up specialized labs to support the curriculum and purchasing third-party cyber labs are not an option for many departments due to reduced budgets. Setting up environments is often left to the instructor after finding difficulties with the limited IT support/or lack of support. Instructors having to create labs is a problematic option since it is a very time-consuming overhead added to the regular activities involved in teaching a curriculum. COVID-19 has recently compounded this problem due to universities having to restrict access to labs. Creating virtual labs for cybersecurity classes has been given attention in the last few years, and ASEE has published papers on the topic [1- 4]. Some universities are creating labs, while others are using the NSF-funded SEED Labs Project. [5-7]. The authors are proposing an opensource project initiative that allows universities, students, and others to contribute their lab work to a public repository hosted by an entity like GitHub. The work can be shared globally without costs or dependence on funding. This presentation is divided into two parts. First, the success of developing hands-on virtual labs and their importance for cybersecurity classes is described. Second, the opensource initiative in greater detail is discussed outlining what was developed, and the authors call on universities to pilot our framework and invite interested parties to contribute to an opensource collaborative infrastructure platform currently under construction. The authors believe the success of this project has great potential for community colleges and universities. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021