Research Computing Brownbag:
UW Networking: Enabling UW Research

Friday, October 24, 2008
10 a.m.-Noon
Pyle Center

View the presentation slides:
Dale Carder's talk
Jeff Bartig's talk

High-speed networking can enhance if not change the way research is performed. In support of research, UW-Madison has significantly enhanced its on and off-campus network capabilities and connectivity over the last few years. On October 24th, we'll explore these network enhancements that can be used from your lab or office to facilitate things such as:

  • Collaboration with regional, national and international colleagues
  • Distributed computing
  • Accessing remote data or providing access to your data
  • Accessing remote instruments or providing access to UW instruments
  • High-quality videoconferencing
  • High-speed access to other research, education and government institutions
  • High-speed access to commercial entities

UW's strong regional network connectivity facilitates access to future resources, such as the NCSA Bluewaters petascale computational project. We'll wrap up our talk with a brief presentation by NCSA on this project, which is now accepting proposals from researchers considering using this resource.

Speakers

Jeff Bartig
Jeff Bartig is a Senior Network Engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Information Technology and Chief Network Engineer for WiscNet, Wisconsin's research and education network. He received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Carroll University, Waukesha, WI. He has been at the University of Wisconsin since 1991 and joined the networking group in 1995.

He is a member of Internet2's Network Technical Advisory Committee (NTAC) and chairs the NTAC Peering Working Group. He co-chaired WiscNet's Advancing Networking Working Group that laid the groundwork for WiscNet's pioneering usage insensitive bandwidth model. During his involvement with WiscNet, it has grown from 6 T1s (9Mb/s) of external connectivity to now having multiple 10Gb/s of redundant capacity to the rest of the Internet.

Prior to Bartig's involvement with University of Wisconsin and WiscNet data networking, his focus in the early 1990's was on Unix system administration. He was responsible for the operation of the University of Wisconsin's WiscWorld e-mail service providing 40,000+ student, faculty, and staff e-mail accounts and lead the development and implementation of its second and third generation upgrades.

Dale Carder
Dale W. Carder is a Senior Network Engineer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Information Technology and WiscNet. His responsibilities include two long-haul DWDM optical systems (BOREAS-NET and WiscNet), network management systems, research support, and development of new network services for the Madison campus.

Bob Wilhelmson
Robert Wilhelmson, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois and Chief Scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), received his B.S. degree in mathematics from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. He then completed his M.S. (1969) and Ph.D. (1972) in computer science from UIUC in the areas of computer software and numerical analysis, respectively. In 1979 he received with Dr. Klemp the Outstanding Publication Award from the National Center for Atmospheric Research for research carried out with the newly developed Klemp-Wilhelmson storm model. Versions of this first time-split storm model are still in use today. In 1983 both were presented with the Meisinger Award from the American Meteorological Society. In 1996 Dr. Wilhelmson received (with former student Harold Brooks) the Outstanding Scientific Paper Award from NOAA’s Environmental Research Laboratories. He is currently a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society. He heads the Convective Modeling Group at Illinois and has also served as Head of the Atmospheric Science Department for four years.

In the mid-80's, Wilhelmson was a co-PI on the original proposal that funded NCSA. This ground-breaking proposal was funded by NSF in 1985. Since then he has served NCSA in his roles as senior research scientist, Associate Director, head of the Cyberapplications and Communities Division, and Blue Waters application lead. In collaboration with the NCSA visualization team, he pioneered the use of high-end visualization strategies and software which led to award-winning animations of severe convective storms including an Academy Award nomination and most recently led the science team in creating animations used in the latest NOVA tornado show, Hunt for the Supertwister.

 

Any questions about this event may be directed to Hideko Mills or Steve Krogull