UC Davis Information & Educational Technology

Cyberinfrastructure for Research

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A Workshop for UC Davis Researchers

Sponsors: Barry M. Klein, Vice Chancellor for Office of Research and Peter M. Siegel, Vice Provost for Information and Educational Technology

Status: The cyberinfrastructure workshop for UC Davis researchers was held on campus on Thursday, April 5 and Friday, April 6, 2007. The program featured a series of presentations by representatives from cyberinfrastructure agencies and by UC Davis faculty members representing five different schools and colleges. The presentations and the notes from breakout sessions are now available.

Results from this workshop, and a preliminary roadmap for the development of cyberinfrastructure at UC Davis, will be shared with the campus community later in the Spring of 2007.

Recent articles about the cyberinfrastructure workshop:

Rationale: There is a set of state/national global problems challenging society that UC should be playing a leadership role in helping to resolve.  Cyberinfrastructure plays an increasingly important role in enabling campus researchers to examine potential solutions to these problems and to collaborate with their colleagues around the globe. Via high-performance networks and computing, software tools, and visualization facilities.

The demands on the UC research cyberinfrastructure are growing at a phenomenal rate as a result of the increase in computational power available, data being collected and generated, and the requirement for more inter-disciplinary collaboration.  This growth is taxing the capability of existing networks, support staffs, and storage and backup services along with creating an ever-increasing complexity for researchers needing access to these resources.

A number of higher education partners such as EDUCAUSE, Teragrid, Internet2, CENIC, and the Open Science Grid have come together to examine how they can assist Universities in developing the solutions to these challenges.  UC Davis will host the first meeting between these groups and campus faculty as a starting point in addressing our local cyberinfrastructure needs.

Goals for the workshop:

  • Start a dialogue between UC Davis faculty, researchers, IT providers, research administrators and cyberinfrastructure providers
  • Provide an opportunity for UC Davis researchers to:
    • Extend their understanding of cyberinfrastructure resources and opportunities;
    • Share project needs with partners from regional and national cyberinfrastructure organizations, as well as with colleagues from various disciplines;
    • Meet others interested in collaboration and peer support for deploying cyberinfrastructure at UC Davis; and
    • Share recommendations and suggestions for strategic cyberinfrastructure development at UC Davis.

From the workshop, IET and Office of Research will develop a UC Davis research cyberinfrastructure planning framework that identifies:

    • The infrastructure that is available and how to better leverage it
    • The gaps in campus cyberinfrastructure and ideas to close these gaps
    • The challenges to achieving local and systemwide cyberinfrastructure capabilities and potential ways to overcome them
    • Methods of addressing the “have-nots”
    • Ways to better leverage campus and systemwide cyberinfrastructure investments

Process:

  • Provide a two-day forum for faculty to consult with higher education partners involved with cyberinfrastructure funding, development, or provisioning
  • Provide a vehicle for input into the existing High Performance Research Computing Steering Group who will be preparing a report for systemwide distribution and consultation over the next several months.

Attendees

Description of Cyberinfrastructure Days from Internet2:
 
For each person you ask “What is Cyberinfrastructure?” you will get a different answer.  Indeed Cyberinfrastructure (CI) can include many functions and capabilities and there are many organizations that provide portions of the overall CI picture.  Part of the reason for this complexity is that CI really encompasses several things:

  • A global infrastructure provided and used by research disciplines made up of people from many organizations at many locations;
  • A distributed computer with computation, storage, input/output, software, management at the various locations (the network provides this computer’s backplane);
  • A range of support resources for the people that use it -- including training, consulting and collaboration tools that allow the multiple locations to work smoothly together;  and
  • Issues related to coordinating and formatting data so that it may be shared within and between research discipilines.

TeraGrid, Open Science Grid, Internet2 and EDUCAUSE have come together to try to help better understand the CI picture, and to clarify functions and roles in the creation of this infrastructure.  One activity started by this group is the “CI Days” held for campuses to assist in their CI planning.  This workshop brings together players from the campus, region and nation to share information and plan how to provide CI functions for the campus.  As they learn more about the campus needs, the national and regional groups will be in a better position to help direct the evolution of their CI services to meet those needs.

Primary Feedback to Date

  • Pending

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