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We have found that the greatest challenges involve communication and engagement between remote and local researchers rather than specific technical problems. With the research team distributed geographically and communications more awkward, relationships are difficult to establish and maintain. Our hope is to exploit the ongoing convergence of telecommunications and computing technologies, integrating communications channels (audio, video, messaging, email, etc.) and data to aid in the development of a productive collaborative environment. Advanced directory services that allow people and data streams to be identified, located, scheduled and connected into a flexible communications fabric need to be developed and deployed. The directory would be augmented by "presence" information supplied implicitly or explicitly by users. The directory and communications infrastructure must support "roles"; that is, there is a need to locate and communicate with people who are distinguished by function rather than name or location. Examples would be the session leader of an experiment or the technical support personnel for various subsystems. Implementation of these capabilities implies a tight coupling between databases and communications tools.