Share best practices for campus research computing at January workshop

Professionals involved in operating and supporting campus shared research computing infrastructure are invited to participate in a best practices workshop on Advancing Research Computing on Campuses, Jan. 16-17, 2014, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The workshop is sponsored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Condo of Condos.

The evolving role of computing and data in scientific discovery has created new challenges for campus IT organizations. Infrastructure—both technical and human—has become increasingly generalized, making it difficult for a campus to effectively support the complex and diverse requirements of today’s compute and data intensive research-driven agenda. This has forced campuses to take on a larger role in supporting the increasing demands for research computing resources. As campus IT organizations build and expand infrastructure components to address the needs of their users, coordination between campuses is critical in order to create successful, sustainable, scalable, and flexible models.

Proposed topics of discussion include:

• Best practices for running advanced computing resources in a higher education environment
• Interactions with national data centers and national infrastructures
• The condo model
• Business models
• Financial models with faculty investments
• Return on investment

Confirmed workshop speakers include:

• James Cuff, Assistant Dean for Research Computing in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard, and Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center
• Donna Cumberland, director of research services and support, Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), Purdue University
• Erik Deumens, director of research computing, University of Florida, and SSERCA (Sunshine State Education & Research Computing Alliance)
• David Lifka, director of the Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing / director of research computing at Weill Cornell Medical Center
• Ruth Marinshaw, CTO – Research Computing, Stanford University
• Tracy Smith, associate director of networking, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

If you are interested in presenting a lightning talk on your current practices and issues facing your research computing infrastructure, please contact Martin Biernat at mjbierna@illinois.edu.

Registration is just $50 and can be completed online at http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/Conferences/ARCC/.

Sponsorship opportunities are also available. For more information, contact Martin Biernat at mjbierna@illinois.edu.

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