Research Computing at UW-Madison--One-Day Brainstorm
Sponsored by the ITC, the Office of the CIO, and the Graduate School
Friday January 28th, 2011, 9:00 -11:50 Ebling Symposium Center Microbial Sciences Building
Presenters and Session Videos:
Research Computing at UW Madison One Day Brainstorm
Dan Negrut, Mechanical Engineering
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Transcript
Data Mining Literature at UW Madison
Michael Witmore, English
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Transcript
BioImage Informatics: Challenges and Opportunities
Kevin Eliceiri, Laboratory for Optical and Computational Instrumentation
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Transcript
High Throughput Computing (HTC)
Miron Livny, Computer Science
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Transcript
Research Computing at The UW
Edgar Spalding, Botany
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Transcript
Computational Biophysics & Chemistry
Qiang Cui, Chemistry
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Transcript
Background:
Our campus boasts some of the most accomplished research computing groups in the world, and dozens of PIs here run research groups that depend on computational methods. The aggregate skills, resources and expertise are enormous. BUT, Research Computing at UW-Madison is difficult to navigate and in need of greater care and attention to keep us competitive, agile, creative, and efficient. There are hundreds of investigators who stand to benefit from a coordinated campus-wide Research Computing activity that consolidates existing resources and expertise and directs future investments.
Several of the top items on a very short list of IT priorities winnowed from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Strategic Plan are in the Research Computing sphere. The new focus at the campus level on Research Computing comes in the context of two national searches, one for the new Vice-Chancellor of Research/Graduate School Dean and one for a new Chief Information Officer. We request faculty guidance and input in order to capitalize on this current strong sense of coordination and purpose for improvements to our research computing infrastructure.
Overall Goals:
We are searching for concrete, realistic and achievable ways to improve research computing on our campus. At the end of the event on 1/28 we will summarize with a short list of action items for the CIO, Provost and Chancellor. Further plans will be drawn up and pursued.
Examples of questions that might be addressed:
Who should own and lead the Research Computing Activities on the campus?
Should the campus invest over-head in supporting Research Computing activities?
Should the campus invest in training/educating our Research Computing workforce?
Potential issues on the table
- Accessing the web of expertise that already exists on campus
- Data storage
- Data sharing
- Distributed computing
- High performance computing
- Power usage
- New research computing in digital arts and humanities
- Finding and hiring employees with proper research and IT experience and skills
For more information about this session or the research computing efforts, contact the current ITC Chair, Katrina Forest.