Category: events

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Plenary session hosted by the Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, March 2, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

PLENARY: Using Data to Benchmark your Research Computing and Data Program: The RCD Capabilities Model and Community Dataset

Presenters: Claire Mizumoto, UC San Diego & Patrick Schmitz, Semper Cognito Consulting

Join us during the regular data-facing slot for the first (and hopefully not last) People Network plenary session! Claire Mizumoto and Patrick Schmitz from the Capabilities Model working group will present the results from the first community dataset. These assessments were completed using the 1.0 version of the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model (RCD CM), over a period of several months in the Spring and Summer of 2020. This Community Dataset provides insight into the current state of support for RCD across the community and in a number of key sub-communities.

Across science, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities, every university depends upon research computing and data (RCD) professionals and infrastructure. The rapid evolution and diversification of RCD infrastructure, services, and support poses significant challenges to academic institutions as they try to effectively assess and plan for the growing needs of researchers. Many institutions would also like to assess their capabilities in comparison to peers. The lack of a shared vocabulary to describe the various aspects of RCD support hinders coordinated efforts to advance support of and for researchers. These challenges are especially acute for smaller and emerging RCD support organizations, which often lack experience supporting RCD and have limited resources to develop an analysis framework for strategic planning. To address these gaps, a collaborative team developed a Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model that allows an organization to self-evaluate across a range of RCD services. The Model provides structured input to guide strategic planning, leveraging a defined and shared community vocabulary and enabling benchmarking relative to peer institutions.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, March 11, 1pm ET (12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT)

All About Orienting Researchers to Research Computing + Data Resources

Please see below for People Network calls this month, and make sure to join in! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.) 

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, February 2, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Casual Tuesday Community Roundtable

We want to take this month to hear a bit about what everyone is up to. This session will be a general sharing and free-form brainstorming session. We’d love to hear 3-5 minutes about projects that people are working on currently or new developments. If you’re stuck on something, feel free to bring that forward and get advice from the brain trust. We can also make breakout rooms for deeper discussions that arise.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, February 11, 1pm ET (12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT)

Supporting Researchers with Containers

We hope you have a wonderful holiday season and are able to join People Network calls in January! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.) 

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, January 5, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Python for Big Data

Presenter: Bala Desinghu, Rutgers University

Python is a popular programming language for developing software and data science applications. Its popularity stems from many factors such as simplicity, readability, portability, etc. As such, Python is slow compared to C or Fortran and it does not manage memory well. These limitations in speed and memory management may not be significant when analyzing small data sets, but it becomes a bottleneck when analyzing big data sets. Techniques based on vectorization, parallelization, just in time compilation, and distributed task executions have been widely adopted by the Python community to address these challenges associated with big data. This presentation will address a few techniques suitable for large scale data analysis and answer the following questions: What to do when the data set size exceeds the available physical memory? How to speed up the data analysis? How to distribute the workloads when doing machine learning for big data sets?

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, January 14, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

All about CaRCC (… beyond the R-F Track)

Presenters:
Tom Cheatham, University of Utah
Lauren Michael, University of Wisconsin
Dana Brunson, Internet2
Patrick Schmitz, Semper Cogito Consulting

We’ll have just three community calls in December (to avoid conflicts with winter vacation plans), including a cross-network party! (For handy calendar entries, see the CaRCC Events Calendar.) 

CaRCC End-Of-Year Party

Thursday, December 10, 1-2:30pm ET / 12-1:30pm CT / 11am-12:30pm MT / 10-11:30am PT

We’ll use the usual Zoom room, and Zoom’s new support for self-select breakout rooms, with rooms designated for following topics: Main Room: Greetings, Hors D’oeuvres, and Games; SC After-Party; People Network Brainstorm (share your ideas!); All About CaRCC Working and Interest Groups.

Make sure you’ve updated your Zoom client since September 21 (to version 5.3.0 or higher).

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, December 1, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Creating a standard Vocabulary: the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)

David Anderson from the National Library of Medicine will present on the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The UMLS is a set of files and software that brings together many health and biomedical vocabularies and standards to enable interoperability between computer systems. David will provide a basic overview of the UMLS including its history and use cases.

Emerging Centers Track (third Wednesdays)

Wednesday, December 16, 12p ET/ 11a CT/ 10a MT/ 9a PT

NSF Program Directors – Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) NSF 21-528

You will not want to miss this call! The NSF CC* program is a perfect program for emerging centers to begin developing their research partnerships and center resources.

Kevin L. Thompson, NSF CISE/OAC and Deepankar (Deep) Medhi, NSF CISE/CNS, will share information about the recently released CC* Program solicitation and answer any questions you may have.  Jen Schopf, Director of EPOC, will then answer some commonly asked questions that EPOC has heard from previous submitters to the CC* program.  She will briefly explain how the EPOC program experts can assist you in the development of your proposal.   

We encourage previous recipients of the award to share any lessons learned or tips and tricks for developing a successful proposal.

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

CaRCC End-Of-Year Party (Save the date!)

Thursday, December 10, 1-2:30pm ET / 12-1:30pm CT / 11am-12:30pm MT / 10-11:30am PT

We’ll use Zoom’s new support for self-select breakout rooms, with rooms designated for several topics, including opportunities to learn about and get involved with CaRCC Working Groups and People Network engagement, and a room for an SC20 ‘after-party’ discussion. Make sure you’ve recently updated your Zoom client (to version 5.3.0 or higher) to take full advantage.

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, November 3, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Teaching Data Skills Remotely: Check-in

This month is a check-in discussion about teaching research data skills remotely 6+ months into the effort.  What have you learned about teaching R, Python, SQL, and other data programming languages and skills online?  What resources (technical and people) are required to be successful?  What have you changed from your initial efforts?  How have your experiences influenced your thinking about workshops and training for the future?  What training do you provide other than live workshops?  Any experiments in remote formats?  We’ll have a panel of folks willing to briefly share their experiences, but there will also be an open discussion time to share ideas and resources and ask questions.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, November 12, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, October 6, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

The Power of Electronic Lab Notebooks

Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) are a digital tool to help address the increasing concerns around data. Researchers are concerned about reproducibility and granting agencies are concerned about data management and availability. Labs are also collaborating with people around the world. Paper just doesn’t cut it anymore. With ELNs, researchers can capture notes about their experiments and attach the generated data files directly to them. Then, they can give their collaborators access to the data by sharing the notebook with them. Plus, many notebooks allow for metadata generation and have advanced search capabilities, something that paper notebooks cannot do.

Join us to hear about the general concept of ELNs, some of the popular products on the market today, what supporting them looks like, and a bit about how to obtain one for your university.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, October 8, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries, try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, Sept 1, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

An Institution-wide Examination of Data Needs: NSF EPOC Deep Dive at the University of Cincinnati

The Engagement and Performance Operations Center: Overview and Opportunities. The Engagement and Performance Operations Center (EPOC), funded by the US National Science Foundation, is a collaborative focal point for operational expertise and analysis jointly lead by Indiana University (IU) and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet). The Center enables researchers to routinely, reliably, and robustly transfer data through a holistic approach to understanding the full pipeline of data movement to better support collaborative science. Through its measurement and monitoring work, as well as associated service advice and training, it brings together multiple knowledgeable and experienced science engagement teams.

A University’s Point of View. The University of Cincinnati was fortunate to be one of the first EPOC Deep Dive locations.  We will 1) share the process we used to collect the data/case studies from the researchers before the onsite visit from EPOC, 2) the two-day visit with the EPOC team and 3) outcomes, challenges and opportunities for implementation of the recommendations.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, September 10, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Supporting Researchers in the Cloud: One University’s Approach

For August, we’ll do something a little different, with two opportunities for cross-track conversation. (These are in lieu of track-specific calls, which are otherwise canceled for August.)

PEARC20 After-Party: August 4th @ 1:00pm-2:00pm ET 

(at the usual Data-Facing track meeting time)

Be sure to join at the top of the hour to finalize topic-based breakout rooms. We’ll use a Blackboard Collaborate session, which has a feature for breakout rooms that participants can move between, freely. Potential breakout topics suggested by our track coordinators are listed below:

• Conference Feedback
• RCD Professionalization
• New Applications Tech
• New Systems/Services Tech
• Communicating about RCD Resources
• Review of Sessions about CaRCC Activities
• Happy Hour (whatever that means to you)

The Blackboard Collaborate session and a Google Doc for notes have been shared via email to the entire People Network, as well as a calendar invite. If you did not receive these and would like to join the call, please contact help@carcc.org

Service Models for Researcher-Purchased Computing and Storage: August 20th @ 1:00pm-2:30pm ET

(at the usual Systems-Facing track meeting time)

Description: The term “condo” is an umbrella term for an increasingly common family of service models for research computing and data storage in higher education. However, the way this design pattern manifests can vary greatly from one institution to another, and there’s no single answer for the right way to implement computing and data capacity for-purchase. The purpose of this call will be to discuss approaches to researcher-purchased capacity from a variety of perspectives, including systems professionals, support and facilitation professionals, researchers, and other stakeholders.  Discussion areas will include ownership models, funding and purchase strategies, user experience/policy considerations, hosting and operational support, etc.  Discussion will consist of a panel format with a series of short site introductions by representatives of diverse service models, followed by a longer Q&A.  To accommodate the multiple perspectives and facets, this call will be 90 minutes long.

Zoom coordinates (usual) have been distributed via email to the People Network email list, or can be requested via help@carcc.org.

Mark your calendars for these upcoming People Network virtual meetings. (For handy calendar entries please try the CaRCC Events Calendar.)

Data-Facing Track (first Tuesdays)

Tuesday, July 7, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

What data to keep? — Making decisions about confocal microscopy data

Presenters: Huajin Wang, Librarian/ Program Director for Open Science & Data Collaborations, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and Susan Ivey, Research Data & Infrastructure Librarian, NC State University Libraries

As the quantity and volume of data produced by research increases exponentially, it has become increasingly challenging to preserve and reproduce data. Traditionally, researchers have often created their own workflows and their own data storage solutions, but this is no longer sustainable, making collaborations and data sharing challenging. On the other hand, data librarians are tasked with helping researchers share and preserve their data, but understanding specific types of data and how to maximize reuse can be difficult. Large and complex data exist in a variety of disciplinary areas, and one example is confocal microscopy data. In April 2019, the Data Curation Network held their 2nd Data Curators Workshop at Johns Hopkins University. Susan Ivey, Amy Koshoffer, Gretchen Sneff, and Huajin Wang formed a group to address many of these issues associated with confocal microscopy data. During this July’s Data-Facing Call, we’ll go into detail about common workflow and challenges that researchers face when working with confocal microscopy data and give an overview of our “Confocal Microscopy Data: A Primer for Curators,” which we created to help those tasked with curating this type of data. We’ll also present some of the use cases that we used to inform this work and invite the audience to think about how to best preserve and share these data.

Researcher-Facing Track (second Thursdays)

Thursday, July 9, 1p ET/ 12p CT/ 11a MT/ 10a PT

Big Data, Big Compute Solutions, a community discussion