Gateways assemble some of the most complex components of today's cyberinfrastructure and can package them with easy-to-use interfaces. Researchers can access data from expensive, high-end instruments and computing systems usually available only to a select few. They can apply sophisticated analytic techniques to raw data and combine resources—for example launching high-end simulations if sensor data indicate certain conditions. They can organize their analyses, easily comparing different experiments to identify changes. They can share and compare results with those of other researchers. They can visualize and annotate multi-scale scientific data such as fMRI images, coupled with video, audio, and biological markers such as heart rate and eye movement. Today, with such diverse capabilities accessible through a browser, researchers can synthesize information to answer challenging questions that could not be considered before. All these cutting-edge capabilities cannot be scaled to serve a large audience without gateways. By assigning the task of building gateways to specialists, we open researchers' time to focus on the science and engineering that they do best.
