Good Monday, and welcome to March, fellow People Networkers & friends/colleagues in the RCD Community!
Choosing a more reliable coin toss instead of Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast, we give a nod this month to the upcoming Spring thaw and to other March events (St. Patrick’s Day, March Madness, and many others), including our great lineup of Calls below.
Please mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network and CaRCC Activity Group Calls (Zoom details at the end), as well as Calls from our RCD ecosystem peers. For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC People Network Calendar (GCal view; calendar integration). And if you’re not on our mailing lists, you can join via our Members page and join our Slack channels.
Monthly CaRCC Welcome
Thu, 3/6, 2p ET/ 1p CT/ 12p MT/ 12:30p (1st Thu) PT
Come to learn more about CaRCC’s community-powered organization and opportunities, and feel free to bring along or pass the word to colleagues. These use the same Zoom coordinates as our People Network calls (see further below).
CaRCC People Network Calls
Data-Facing Track (1st Tuesdays)
Tue 3/4, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
Introduction to High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters
Brian Haymore and Martin Cuma – University of Utah, Center for High Performance Computing
Join us for an introduction to High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters. This month’s session will provide an overview of HPC systems, their components, and their applications. We’ll also discuss practical considerations like access, use case, and common challenges. If you are already experienced with HPC, please come and contribute your perspectives and insights as well.
Strategy and Policy-Facing Track (1st Wednesdays)
Wed 3/5, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT
The Data problem
Curt Hillegas, Princeton University, and Scott Yockel, Harvard University and NESE
The rapid expansion of data science and artificial intelligence has ushered in an era of unprecedented data generation, yet it has also brought to light significant challenges in managing, processing, and interpreting this wealth of information. In this discussion, we’ll feature speakers from Princeton, Harvard, and NESE to explore “the data problem” in research computing followed by open discussion. They’ll share insights on the challenges they’re tackling, the lessons they’ve uncovered, and their visions for the future—both where they’re headed and where they aspire to go.
Researcher-Facing Track (2nd Thursdays)
Thu 3/13, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
Research Security Facilitation, Community Discussion
Research information security is evolving rapidly in higher education due to increasing regulatory requirements, cyber threats, and funding agency mandates. This shift is fundamentally changing how we interact with researchers at our institutions. Let’s discuss:
- How is information security changing the conversation with researchers?
- Have you had to adjust your service offerings?
- Has this caused staffing changes or have you created new roles?
- How are you building new relationships across campus to support compliance?
We will kick the conversation off with some use cases followed by a community discussion. Join us!
Emerging Centers Track (3rd Wednesdays)
Wed 3/19, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT/ 7a HT
Affinity Group Community Discussion
One of the discussion themes that emerged from the PEARC24 BoF was the desire for emerging centers to be more closely connected in community, to be “Part of the Club”. In response, the Emerging Centers Steering Committee has been thinking about creating what we’re calling “Affinity Groups”, small, informal discussions between peers. We’ve got some ideas about how they might work and we’d like to seed a discussion with those ideas and then hear from the community to see if we’re on the right track. We look forward to your ideas as we work to create more closely knit communities.
Systems-Facing Track (3rd Thursdays)
Thu 3/20, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT
NodeMan: a Node Management tool for HPC
Presenter: Scott Serr, INL
A swiss army knife for HPC, NodeMan is a set of bash functions to manage HPC environments that uses: GNU Parallel, clustershell for host sets, and stdin/stdout to provide a simple set of commands that can be assembled like building blocks. Who will find this useful? (HPC) System administrators who manage nodes. Sysadmins that use pdsh, clush, and shell scripts will find it familiar. Sysadmins that find themselves writing scripts with loops will see it is quite powerful. Sysadmins that write lengthy “one-liners” that they later don’t understand will really appreciate the encapsulation NodeMan provides.
Additional Community Opportunities
Thu 3/6, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11am MT/ 10a PT (1st Thursdays): RCD Mentoring Working Group Monthly meet-up. We are pleased to invite you to our March update: This session will provide an overview of the group’s charter, goals, and objectives, along with key updates on our progress. As we continue to develop this initiative, we are also seeking volunteers to help expand the group’s impact. If you are interested in contributing to the mentorship pipeline within the research computing and data (RCD) community, this is a great opportunity to get involved. Meeting coordinates: Zoom Session URL. Join the workforce-mentoring-wg@carcc.org mailing list or send questions to RCD Staff and Student Workforce Mentoring Coordinators.
Tue 3/11, 1p ET/ 10a PT (2nd Tuesdays): RCD Capabilities Model Office Hours. Have questions about getting started, completing, or viewing benchmarking data with the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model? Or are you already working with it and want to discuss suggestions for improvements you’d like to see? Meeting coordinates: Zoom Session URL. Join the capsmodel-discuss@carcc.org mailing list or send questions to capsmodel-help@carcc.org.
Tue 3/11, 2p ET/ 1p CT/ 12p MT/ 11a PT (2nd Tuesdays): RCD Staff and Student Workforce Development Interest Groups. Student-to-FTE Pathways. Join us for the March Student and Staff Workforce Development Community Call, where we’ll explore how to effectively transition student workers into full-time roles within your RCD workforce. How can you identify and support strong student candidates for long-term success? Does your institution support pathways from student worker to FTE, and if not, what could programs like this look like? Learn from community experiences on building effective talent pipelines through internships and industry partnerships. This session will feature Allison Bryan Jungels from Purdue University – Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering, sharing insights on their collaboration with a major pharmaceutical company to develop student-to-FTE pathways. We’ll also hear from Stephen Deems of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center about his experience starting at PSC as a student employee and then joining the full-time staff. Zoom Session URL (Meeting ID: 867 2543 9159 passcode 165236). Join the Interest Group mailing list.
Wed 3/12, 2p ET/ 11a PT (2nd Wednesdays): Regulated Research Community of Practice (RRCoP) Community Discussions. This month, the topic will be Flipping the Script on CMMC with AFRL Digital Research Ecosystem. This talk will also discuss how AFRL’s digital ecosystem helps its collaborators meet compliance requirements while providing access to the latest commercial cloud technologies and services. We highly encourage anyone with Air Force Research Labs (AFRL) contracts to join for this valuable talk! Please use this Zoom link, and contact info@regulatedresearch.org or Carolyn Ellis with any questions.
Thu 3/13, 12p ET/ 9a PT (2nd Thursdays/2nd Fridays): US Research Software Engineers monthly community call. See https://us-rse.org/calendar/ for more information.
Mon 4p ET/ 3p CT/ 2p MT/ 1p PT (every Monday): OSG Consortium / 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. https://osg-htc.org/campus-office-hours-zoom. For more information, please contact Christina Koch.
CaRCC Calls and Zoom
All CaRCC People Network calls will take place within a Zoom room communicated via email and visible in the CaRCC People Network Google calendar (see top). Please help us keep these details secure (non-public), but feel free to share with a colleague.
Interested members of the People Network need not subscribe to a particular track to participate in calls. Additional details for track members, including notes documents and any pre-call activities, will be distributed ahead of the call via the email lists and other communication channels within each track.