Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network calls (Zoom details at the end). For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar. We also highlight other calls from our RCD Ecosystem partners and collaborators, as these events touch many, if not all, in our community.
If you’re not on our mailing lists, please fill out our Join the People Network form and join our Slack channels.
6/7/23 update: We included an update for the Researcher-Facing call topic, as well as additional Community Calls opportunities.
CaRCC People Network Calls
Data-Facing Track (1st Tuesdays)
The National Science Data Fabric (NSDF): A Platform Agnostic Testbed for Democratizing Data Delivery, Christine Kirkpatrick, San Diego Supercomputer Center’s (SDSC) Research Data Services division,
Tue 06/06 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
The National Science Data Fabric (NSDF) pilot connects an open network of institutions, including minority serving institutions, by deploying a federated data fabric testbed configurable for individual and shared scientific use. The NSDF pilot offers a shared, modular, containerized data delivery environment, operating at the best economies of scale, the NSDF pilot demonstrates a key technology to fill the missing middle in our current computational infrastructure. The NSDF pilot builds a shared resource for equity in data access across a diversity of disciplines, institutions, and people. The NSDF pilot embraces the motto of the Minority Serving Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC) of accomplishing together what we cannot do separately. The NSDF pilot connects data sources with compute and networking components through a software stack that democratizes data delivery and empowers end users with scalable, easy-to-use, integrated, and extendable tools.
Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1st Wednesdays)
Documenting metrics for RCD programs, Panel (TBA)
Wed 6/7, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT
From reporting operational performance metric in terms of system up-time to research impact metric of grant dollars generated, every RCD program uses some sort of performance metrics to showcase its impact to various audiences. In this two part discussion series, we will explore different types of metrics in use at various RCD programs which are diverse in maturity/size. The first session will focus on the data collection done in compiling metrics and the follow up session will be on how the collected data is used.
Researcher-Facing Track (2nd Thursdays)
ACCESS Allocation Services: National cyberinfrastructure for research, development, and education
Stephen Deems, Principal Investigator for ACCESS Resource Allocations Marketplace and Platform Services (RAMPS) grant
Thu 6/8, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
NSF-supported cyberinfrastructure (CI) has been highly successful in advancing science and engineering over the last few decades. The ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Service & Support) initiative aims to increase user accessibility, enable collaboration, and simplify use of CI. ACCESS Allocation Services provides an efficient, scalable and simplified system of interfaces, policies, and procedures for researchers, educators, and students to request resources in support of their research, educational, and workforce development endeavors. ACCESS welcomes requests not just for traditional high-performance computing (HPC) activities, but for any work that can benefit from resources in the ecosystem, including machine learning, data science, science gateways, software development, and more. This presentation will provide an overview of ACCESS Allocation Services – how to request resources, upcoming innovative pilots, and how to get involved.
Emerging Centers Track (3rd Wednesdays)
The National Research Platform Enables a Growing Diversity of Users and Applications,
Presentation by Larry Smarr, PhD
Wed 6/21, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT/ 7a HT
The demand from academic institutions of all scales for equitable and inclusive access to affordable computing (CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs) and data storage to enable machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications has grown rapidly in recent years. I will discuss how NSF funding of a number of cyberinfrastructure grants has led to the emergence of the National Research Platform (NRP), which is increasingly providing this access. The NRP, led by UCSD’s Professor Frank Wuerthwein (SDSC Director) enables faculty and students to launch their containerized software applications from their home campus onto the widely distributed NRP cyberinfrastructure, where Google’s Kubernetes automatically executes the software. I will review the broad spectrum of both data-intensive disciplinary and emerging AI/ML NRP applications. The NRP has rapidly grown as more and more campus host NRP nodes, all unified into a shared CI Commons. NRP currently enables user access to over 1,250 GPUs, nearly 20,000 CPU cores, and 32 FPGAs plus >10 PB of 40-100Gbps-connected high-speed storage. The campuses having NRP users has grown over the last ten years from 20 campuses in 6 states to 127 campuses in 45 states. Diversity has increased as well: from the original 9 Minority Serving Institutions with NRP users to now over 25 and from 2 NSF EPSCoR states to now nearly 20. The NRP’s goal is to continue this inclusive growth by training and engaging an even broader set of researchers.
Systems-Facing Track (3rd Thursdays)
Cluster Resource Management software and solutions
Thu 6/15, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
Based on a survey shared out, link also below, we will be looking to host a set of short presentations from multiple sites reviewing the cluster resource management software and solution sets used, how they appear to perform, their strengths and weaknesses, and if each site plans to continue with the current solutions. The link to the survey for any who have not filled it out yet is: https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_783xjvjLFE0ReF8
Note for July, there will be no Systems-Facing call for July! The System’s Facing Group will not host a call in July to allow the community to focus on upcoming conferences and other activities. Also we will be looking into again planning, in collaboration with HPCSYSPROS, a social/meet up at PEARC23 for those who will be attending.
Additional Community Opportunities
RCD Staff Workforce Development Interest Group
We’ve added an additional call for June! Join us on Tuesday, June 6th (2pm ET/ 1pm CT/ noon MT/ 11am PT) to continue our conversations about the Job Family Framework overlay on Career Phases. New participants welcome!
Our conversations last month were just the tip of the iceberg so we’re reconvening for a Part B on the Job Family Framework overlay on RCD Career Phases. Participants had some great input; we just ran out of time! The entire session will be dedicated to the breakouts so we can dig into the phases and what that means utilizing the RCD Job Family Framework.
Join the Interest Group here https://groups.google.com/a/carcc.org/g/rcd-staff-workforcedev/members (click “Ask to join group”), which will ensure you receive calendar events and separate Zoom details.
Please contact the coordinators for the Zoom information.
US Research Software Engineers
Fri 6/9, 2p ET/ 11a PT (2nd Thursdays/2nd Fridays): The US Research Software Engineers monthly community call for June is “Promoting Good Software Development Practices”. See https://us-rse.org/calendar/ for more information.
RCD Capabilities Model Office Hours
RCD Capabilities Model Office Hours, Wednesday, June 7, anytime between 3pm and 4pm ET (come and go as you please). Have questions about how to get started with the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model? Or are you already working with it and just want to discuss the process, or a particular aspect of the assessment tool? Or do you have suggestions for improvements you’d like to see – any and all things CapsModel! Join the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org mailing list or send questions to capsmodel-help@carcc.org (also for Zoom info).
OSG Consortium/PATh
OSG Consortium and PATh Project host weekly Campus Office Hours, Mondays at 3:00–3:30 pm US Central Time. You are invited to join us any week. For more information / Zoom coordinates, please contact Christina Koch.
Regulated Research Community of Practice (RRCoP)
RRCoP Community Discussions are held 2nd Wednesdays each month, 2 p.m. EST / 11 a.m. PST. On June 14 2023 @ 2 pm ET / 11 am PT, the topic will be Training Topic | NIST SP 800-171 R3: On May 10, 2023 the third revision of NIST SP 800-171 was released for comment. As a community impacted by this, RRCoP will host a discussion to share information with each other. Please contact info@regulatedresearch.org or Carolyn Ellis with any questions or for Zoom info.
CaRCC Calls and Zoom
All calls will take place within Zoom. Please contact a Track Coordinator for more details.