Author: Daphne McCanse

CaRCC at PEARC24: Headed to Providence? Here’s your guide to all things CaRCC!

It’s going to be an exciting and busy week at the PEARC24 conference in Providence, Rhode Island July 21-25. Plan your schedule now and don’t miss these CaRCC-related activities. 

SUNDAY, JULY 21

RCD Nexus Day

8am-6:30pm Room 551 A&B 

Organizers: Venice Bayrd, Justin Booth, Dana Brunson, Thomas Cheatham, Patrick Clemins Bob Freeman, Clark Gaylord, Brian Haymore, Betsy Hillery, Susan Ivey, Deb McCaffrey, Daphne McCanse, Timothy Middelkoop, Lauren Michael, Claire Mizumoto, Patrick Schmitz, Jason Simms, Scott Yockel

This PEARC24 co-located event will bring together professionals from across the Research Computing and Data (RCD) community for a full day of collaboration and connection. Tracks include What We’re Facing as RCD Professionals and Working with Secure Data. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), RCD Nexus Day is an open, inclusive event that warmly welcomes all members of the RCD community. Pre-registration is required. 

MONDAY, JULY 22

Understanding the CaRCC Capabilities Model Assessment Tools and How Best to Use them at Your Institution

8am-5pm Ballroom E

Organizers: Dana Brunson, Thomas Cheatham, John Hicks, Lauren Michael, Patrick Schmitz 

This workshop will provide an introduction to the CaRCC Capabilities Model and how institutions approach using the Capabilities Model assessment tools to improve their strategic planning and make the case for increased campus support to advance computationally- and data-intensive research and education. 

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NSF announces National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot resources now available

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that NAIRR pilot resources are now open and available to the community on nairrpilot.org

Resources include:

  • advanced computing systems
  • cloud computing platforms
  • access to models, software and privacy enhancing technology tools and collaborations to train models
  • and education platforms. 

This opportunity includes access to cutting-edge resources contributed by the pilot’s nongovernmental partners, including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, NVIDIA, SambaNova Systems, Cerebras, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, EleutherAI, OpenMined, Hugging Face and Vocareum.

In addition, the research community will have the opportunity to access resources from additional NSF advanced computing platforms at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, the San Diego Supercomputer Center and the Texas Advanced Computing Center as well as systems at Purdue University, Indiana University and Texas A&M University.

Notably, this second opportunity provides access to online interactive notebooks for educators and instructors to use in classrooms or for student projects.  

How to Apply:

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CaRCC Capabilities Model Workshop at PEARC24 

Attending the PEARC24 conference and would like to learn more about how to use the CaRCC Capabilities Model? We are offering a full-day workshop “Understanding the CaRCC Capabilities Model Assessment Tools and How Best to Use them at Your Institution” on Monday, July 22. Just select the workshop when you register for the PEARC24 conference; there’s no additional cost.  

About the CaRCC Capabilities Model

The CaRCC Capabilities Model allows participating institutions to: 

  • Assess their support for computationally- and data-intensive research.
  • Identify potential areas for improvement. 
  • Understand how the broader community views Research Computing and Data support.   

Contributing institutions help build the Community Dataset, and enrich the resulting picture we have of our community. You will get access to the benchmarking functionality on the new portal that compares your assessment to the community at-large, as well as segments of the community. As a contributor, you will also get access to more detailed reporting functionality on the new portal, to dig into the data and create custom visualizations. 

About the workshop

The workshop will provide an introduction to the CaRCC Capabilities Model and how institutions approach using the Capabilities Model assessment tools to improve their strategic planning and make the case for increased campus support to advance computationally- and data-intensive research and education. Workshop participants will:

  • Gain an introduction to the CaRCC Capabilities Model and the associated assessment tools and community data exploration portal.
  • Explore and discuss the practical aspects of conducting an assessment for an institution.
  • Develop a clear understanding of the tools and gain experience working through the assessment questions.
  • Discuss and compare effective practices for leveraging assessment and benchmarking data in communications with campus leadership.
  • Build connections with peers at similar institutions and learn about the community resources available to support participating institutions.

Check back here for a detailed event agenda, coming soon!

2024 RCD Nexus Day

Registration is now closed for the third annual RCD Nexus Day, a one-day workshop and networking event for research computing and data (RCD) professionals on Sunday, July 21 from 8:30am to 6:30pm preceding the PEARC24 Conference in Providence, RI. RCD Nexus Day is an official PEARC co-located event, and there’s no additional cost to attend.

The event will be held at the main conference venue, the Rhode Island Convention Center, Fifth Floor Room 551A/B. See full schedule below.

Last year’s Nexus Day was full of energy. Join us and let’s make the 3rd year even better!

Travel support was provided to a limited number of applicants and the application for support is now closed.

RCD Nexus is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OAC-2100003.

Keep reading to learn about the track topics and detailed event schedule.

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New! Engagement Facilitation Guide for Smaller and Emerging RCD Programs

The CaRCC Capabilities Model Focused Tools Committee has just released a new guide and script designed to support research computing and data (RCD) facilitators as they engage with institutions that have more modest or newly-emerging RCD programs. The guide is designed to help begin conversion about an institution’s support for research and identify key issues and opportunities for growth and strategic planning. The guide and script have already been used successfully with a number of smaller institutions, and we are pleased to share it for use by the wider RCD community. 

This work was developed with support from the National Science Foundation under the RCD Nexus grant OAC-2100003. 

Keep reading to learn more about how this guide was developed.

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New Release: RCD Nexus Capabilities Model Visualization Portal 

The latest release of the RCD Nexus portal provides new functionality to explore and visualize the community dataset provided by institutions that are using the CaRCC Capabilities Model and/or have contributed their capabilities assessment data. With this release, users can also benchmark their institutional capabilities coverage relative to the community of contributors. Visit portal.rcd-nexus.org/dataviz and try out the new functionality!  If you have questions, complaints, or kudos, please let us know by emailing the RCD CM working group at capsmodel-help@carcc.org. 

Keep reading for more details about the new functionality. 

This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant OAC-2100003.

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Watch the video: The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) by Katie Antypas

You can now watch the video of the CaRCC special presentation by Katie Antypas, office director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure about the recently announced National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot project. The presentation took place on March 28 and quickly reached capacity, as our most popular People Network virtual event to date. Our thanks to Katie and to the CaRCC community for making this an informative and engaging event!

CaRCC Special Presentation: The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) by Katie Antypas 

Thursday, March 28, 2024   at 2PM ET/1PM CT/12PM MT/11AM PT

Message help@carcc.org for link to Zoom meeting.

Join us for a presentation by Katie Antypas, office director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure about the recently announced National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource (NAIRR) pilot project. NAIRR envisions “a shared national research infrastructure for responsible discovery and innovation in AI.” The effort is led by the NSF and includes 10 additional federal agencies and 25 non-governmental partner organizations. The pilot assembles and provides access to technologies and tools to enable U.S. research and education including: computational, data, software, modeling, and user support resources. NAIRR “aims to ensure that AI resources and tools are accessible to the broad research and education communities in a manner that advances trustworthy AI and protects privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.” 

Katie Antypas, Division Deputy, National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), photographed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), 06/06/2023. Thor Swift | Credit: Thor Swift - Photographer Copyright: © The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Thor Swift | Credit: Thor Swift - Photographer Copyright: © The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Katie Antypas Credit: Thor Swift – Photographer Copyright: © The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Katie Antypas, Office Director, National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure

Prior to her role at the NSF, Antypas served at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 17 years in a variety of roles including NERSC Division Deputy, Project Director for NERSC’s large scale High Performance Computing system acquisitions, Director of Hardware and Integration of the Exascale Computing Project, Data Department Head and User Services Group Lead. She remains a Berkeley Lab employee but is on assignment to the NSF through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. Before coming to NERSC in 2006, Katie worked at the Flash Center at the University of Chicago on the FLASH code, a highly scalable, parallel, adaptive mesh refinement astrophysics application. She has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and a bachelors in Physics from Wellesley College.

New! CaRCC Monthly Welcome Events

Members of the Engagement operations group and People Network leadership team will be hosting a new series of CaRCC Monthly Welcome events starting Tuesday, April 2 at 2pm ET. The event is designed for CaRCC newcomers or those wanting to become more involved. They will include an abbreviated overview of CaRCC groups, activities, resources, and volunteer opportunities (similar to the annual CaRCC parade) and will allow time for attendees to ask questions. 

We invite and encourage group leaders and other experienced members of CaRCC to drop in on these events when your schedules allow, to introduce yourselves and your groups. Everyone is welcome! 

Meeting days and times will typically alternate each month between the first Tuesday and first Thursday. The zoom link can be found on the People Network calendar or by requesting it at help@carcc.org. 

Capabilities Model Assessment Tool Upgraded to Version 2.1

The Capabilities Model Assessment Tool has been upgraded to version 2.1, which includes a range of interface improvements and institutional metadata updates. See the v2.1 Release Notes for a complete list of all changes. Highlights of the new version include: 

  • Improved topic level display that shows average coverage values for each question in that topic, and main assessment page that shows average coverage values for each Facing
  • Updated progress indicator that filters out Domain Coverage questions, and eliminates them as a requirement for survey submission
  • Updated RCD Profile user interface that shows additional institutional metadata.

Institutional metadata updates include: 

About the Capabilities Model

The Capabilities Model allows participating institutions to: 

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