A workshop held in Austin, Texas, launched a new era in earthquake science and engineering. Discussions at the workshop, sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) are leading to the collaborative use of multiple major research facilities to solve challenging scientific and engineering problems related to Earth science and seismic hazards. These facilities included those of IRIS and the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), both supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Earthquake Program (NEP). The collaborations discussed at the workshop have already turned into reality. With the added participation of the NSF-supported Mid-America Earthquake Center (MAEC), Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS), High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), a pilot field experiment was conducted to demonstrate (successfully!) the potential of such collaborative science.