Scientific problem solving in a distributed and collaborative multimedia environment

We describe a distributed and collaborative environment for cooperative scientific problem solving. SHASTRA is a highly extensible, distributed and collaborative design and scientific manipulation environment. At its core is a powerful collaboration substrate - to support synchronous multi-user applications, and a distribution substrate - which emphasizes distributed problem solving. The design of SHASTRA is the embodiment of the following idea - scientific manipulation toolkits can abstractly be thought of as objects that isolate and provide specific functionality. At the system level, SHASTRA dictates architectural guidelines and provides communication facilities that let toolkits cooperate to utilize the functionality they offer. At the application level, it provides collaboration and multimedia facilities that let users cooperate. A synergistic union of these two elements yields a sophisticated problem solving environment. Sample applications that we have attempted in SHASTRA include custom design of human hip prosthesis, shape optimization of the connection between a jet engine and an airplane wing, and efficient computation of molecular "docking" algorithms for drug screening.