D4Science: an e-infrastructure for supporting virtual research environments

e-Infrastructure is the term coined for innovative research environments that provide modern scientists with seamless access to shared, distributed and heterogeneous resources. Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are applications whose constituents are dynamically borrowed from the e-Infrastructure, bound (and deployed) instantly, just at the time and for the period they are needed. In this paper we describe D4Science, an e-Infrastructure supporting the design and deployment of VREs.