Researcher-Facing Track

Do you help researchers using IT tools to further their research goals?
Are you involved in research computing and/or data science training?
Do you consult with researchers on more effectively doing their research with advanced computing resources?
Compute with data?

The Researcher-Facing Track of the People Network brings together people from research computing groups, libraries, research institutes, and other organizations who support researchers in every phase of the research lifecycle. Many of us are also Data- & Systems-Facing, but this track is a community-led opportunity to discuss the practices, perspectives, and experiences of facilitation from any perspective.

Topics include:

  • Research computing facilitation
  • Outreach to all disciplines, esp. those under-represented, to aid with research computing resources
  • Education and training
  • The art and practice of facilitation
  • Increasing communications, collaborations, and team-building
  • Research computing UX and user-facing tech
  • And more, as determined by our members!

We connect via monthly calls and an email list. We also invite you to review and contribute to the Leading Practices of Facilitation!

The Researcher-Facing Track is supported by the team efforts of two Co-Coordinators and a Steering Committee. Send questions or comments, feedback, call topic ideas, etc., to the coordinators at rf-coordinators@carcc.org.

Join Us!

Join Us! Fill out our membership form to let us know who you are and what you’re interested in. We’ll add you to this email list and other Tracks that you indicate.

Monthly Calls

Monthly calls are on the second Thursday of the month, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT/ 8a HT. Connection information and links to any materials are distributed via the Researcher-Facing email list.

Upcoming Call(s)

Title: ACCESS Allocation Services: National cyberinfrastructure for research, development, and education 

Date: June 8th, 2023

Abstract: NSF-supported cyberinfrastructure (CI) has been highly successful in advancing science and engineering over the last few decades.  The TeraGrid and XSEDE programs spanned from 2004 to 2022 to provide the research community with the resources necessary to complete their science and educational goals. With the follow-on ACCESS (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Service & Support) initiative, significant efforts are being made to increase user accessibility, enable collaboration, and simplify use of CI. 

The vision for ACCESS Allocation Services states: “the NSF-funded national Cyber Infrastructure must be accessible and equitable for all researchers no matter the size of the institution, the scale of the planned work, the discipline of the research, or the demographics of the requestor.” 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.

Also, please take a moment to vote on these potential R-F call topics! Thanks for your input. 

Track Leadership

Track Coordinators (rf-coordinators@carcc.org)
Justin Booth, Dir. Research IT, Michigan State University
Tobin Magle, Lead Data Management Specialist, Northwestern University

Steering Committee Members (alphabetically)
Gladys Karina Andino Bautista
Carrie Brown
Katia Bulekova
Martin Cuma
Annelie Rugg
Kurt Showmaker

We also wish to thank persons who have previously lead and contributed to the Researcher-Facing track:

Former Track Coordinators

  • Dana Brunson (Internet2)
  • Bob Freeman (Harvard University)
  • Claire Mizumoto (U. California, San Diego)

Former Track Steering Committee Members

  • Christina Koch (UW-Madison)
  • Dirk Colbry (Michigan State University)
  • Lauren Michael (UW-Madison)
  • Amy Neeser (UC Berkeley)
  • Janna Ore Nugent (Northwestern)
  • Wirawan Purwanto (Old Dominion University)
  • Erin Shaw (USC)

Previous Call Topics

03/9/23 STRIDES, Cloud Service Program at The National Institute of Health video
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02/08/23 ACCESS Support Empowers Your Needs video
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01/12/23 What’s hot in 2023? video
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11/10/22 Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer video
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10/13/22 Research data storage video
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9/8/22 Inter-institutional collaboration video
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8/11/22 Highlights from PEARC22 video
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6/09/22 Supporting researchers with the NIH Data Management and Sharing Plan Requirement video
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4/14/22 Supporting Research Data Management video
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3/10/22 Part 2: Sensitive Data in Research Computing – Through Cloud Services video
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2/10/22 Sensitive Data in Research Computing – HIPAA support at the University of Utah video
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1/13/22 Saying No! When, Why, and How to Say No to Researchers video
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12/9/21 CaRCC/People Network End-of-Year Party doc
11/11/21 Supporting GPU computing video
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10/14/21 Series on Leading Practices of Facilitation: Part 2: Improving our People-Facing Skills: Revisiting the Leading Practices of Facilitation video
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9/9/21 Bridging the Gap: Reaching Underrepresented Research Domains for Large-Scale Computing video
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7/8/21 Building Teams with Graduate Student Research Facilitators video
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6/10/21 No call. Virtual Residency week
5/13/21 Workflow Tools for Portable, Reproducible Data Analysis video – recording starts mid-call due to problems at the start
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4/8/21 On Measuring the Impact of Training video
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3/11/21 All About Orienting Researchers to Research Computing + Data Resources video
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2/11/21 Supporting Researchers with Containers video
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1/14/21 All About CaRCC (… beyond the R-F Track) video
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11/12/20 CaRCC End-Of-Year Party doc
11/12/20 Profiling and Optimizing R Code in Your Workloads video
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10/08/20 Writing More Equitable Job Postings video
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09/10/20 Supporting research projects on the cloud video unavailable
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07/09/20 Big Data, Big Compute Solutions, a Community Discussion video
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05/14/20 Remote Support (cont’d): Working with Your Team Remotely video
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04/09/20 Sharing Good Practices in Remote User Support & Training video
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03/12/20 User Support via Ask.CI and Locales video
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02/13/20 Doing it in public: User support via Slack, open forums, Github repos and blogs video
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01/09/20 Handling Support Requests – A Community Discussion video
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12/12/19 University of Missouri reports and Researcher Facing/CI-Engineer Metrics video
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11/14/19 Open OnDemand User Experiences & Challenges video
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10/10/19 An Expansion of User Support Services for the Research Computing Group at the University of Colorado Boulder video
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09/12/19 A Startup Framework for Building Digital Research Capacity and Community at UCLA doc
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08/08/19 PEARC19 recap! doc
07/11/19 Creating effective training materials doc
06/13/19 Lightning talks / Open mic sessions on track topics doc
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