Campus Bridging Technologies Workshop

Indiana University is hosting a workshop focusing on software and software service issues as they apply to the NSF-sponsored Campus Bridging Taskforce charter. The workshop starts on August 26th in Denver, CO from 8am - 5pm. Dinner will be provided that evening beginning at 6pm. The proceedings resume the following morning, Aug 27, from 7:15am until Noon.

We are inviting the submission of position papers from the software and scientific community. Position papers serve several functions. They provide a mechanism for people who cannot attend the workshop to provide input to the workshop. They provide a way to enter your viewpoints into the final workshop report (all position papers will be included in the workshop report as appendices). And last but not least.... position papers are not required for participation. You may register for the conference through the registration page but a position paper accompanying a registration will be appreciated. At present the workshop registration is roughly half full, so please register if you are interested!

In order to provide good opportunities for input, please submit position papers by 23 August 2010 if at all possible.

Please register to participate as soon as possible - this is an important workshop that will help guide NSF plans for the future!

The workshop will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Denver, Colorado on August 26th & 27th, 2010. For more information about the workshop location, refer to this link: Sheraton Downtown Denver.

If you would like to add a position paper or comment on papers, you must first login or create a new account.

Campus Bridging Taskforce

Overview
Cyberinfrastructure may be defined as " …computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible." There is widespread agreement that U.S. investments in research cyberinfrastructure are not coordinated well enough to deliver optimum benefit to the science and engineering research communities.

The NSF has established a hierarchy of Tier 1, 2, and 3 systems. Tier 1 system is the largest NSF-funded supercomputer in the US (located at NCSA). Tier 2 systems are very large, roughly one order of magnitude less powerful (e.g. systems at TACC, NICS, and systems planned at SDSC). Datanet awardees may also establish Tier 2 data storage systems. Tier 3 systems are still very powerful systems operated at the regional or state levels, or at individual universities and colleges. The existing NSF-funded Tier 2 systems are part of the current TeraGrid. The Open Science Grid does not fit particularly well within this heirarchy. It is widely agreed that interoperability of Tier 3 and Tier 2 systems is inadequate to serve the best interests of the U.S. science and engineering communities. From the standpoint of an individual researcher, it is viewed as far too difficult to migrate from a Tier 3 facility to a Tier 2 facility. Problems of coordinating cyberinfrastructure are not limited to the national level; organizing cyberinfrastructure within a university or even a single campus can be challenging.

This taskforce is meant to address the broad issues involving improving campus interactions with CyberInfrastructure, broadly construed. It will include a number of different types of bridging:

• Campus grids to national infrastructure (both compute and data oriented approaches)
• Campus networks to state, regional and national
• Departmental cluster to campus HPC infrastructure
• Campus-to-campus and campus-to-state/regional approaches

Goals
Proposed goals for the taskforce include:

1. Identification of best practices for general process of bridging to national infrastructure
2. Identification of best practices for interoperable identification and authentication
3. Identification of best practices for dissemination of and use of shared data collections
4. Identification of best practices to vetting and sharing definitive, open use educational materials
5. Suggest common elements of software stacks widely usable across nation/world to promote interoperability/economy of scale
6. Suggested policy documents that any research university have in place
7. Identify solicitations to support this work

The fifth and sixth items from the list above will be the primary focus of this workshop. The key overarching goal is to implement processes, tools, and solicitations that will achieve better coordination of cyberinfrastructure to optimize innovation and discovery by the U.S. science and engineering communities.

Software and Software Service Workshop Focus - Leads, John McGee & Von Welch:

• What software, services, best practices and deployment scenarios work well today to provide for bridging?
• What could software providers be doing differently from the point of view of campuses and their users?
• How could software for science and engineering better integrate with and leverage other software on campuses to improve user experience?
• What functionality is missing today for bridging? What will be missing in the next 2-5 years?
• What encourages users to use externally provided CI rather than operate their own?
• What are the barriers to adopting software for science and engineering?