Program Announcements
XSEDE Staff Climate Study
On May 21, everyone should have received an invitation from Lorna Rivera through the Qualtrics online survey platform to complete the 2019 XSEDE Staff Climate Study. Please check your spam folders or contact Lorna directly if you did not receive an invitation to participate in the survey. All responses are completely confidential to the external evaluation team (Lizanne DeStefano, Lorna Rivera, and Julie Wernert) and XSEDE leadership will not know who said what in response to the survey.

Project decisions are reached based on the data from the climate survey, so please take the time to complete it before it closes on July 8, 2019.
XSEDE Staff Publications Initiative – share your work!
All XSEDE staff are encouraged to write traditional peer-reviewed publications as well as Technical Report Series publications, which are other documents of importance to the community that wouldn't otherwise be published in peer-reviewed publications (i.e., policies, documentation, user guides, operating guides, reports, white papers, etc.).

To allow XSEDE leadership to better track the pipeline of publication efforts of all staff, we have set up a simple form that you can complete with any planned or in-progress publications (see link below). The form feeds into a Jira tracking process that will send you timely reminders and help route any Technical Report Series publications through the TRS process. Contact Leslie Froeschl with any questions about this process!

Ranch technology upgrade improves valuable data storage for XSEDE users
As of April 2019, TACC's Ranch machine stores over 70 petabytes, or 70 million gigabytes of scientific data. Over 52,000 users have uploaded close to 1.7 billion computer files on the old library of Ranch. Hypothetically, the new upgrades to Ranch could expand its storage to reach a mind-boggling exabyte, or 1,000 petabytes. Ranch is an  allocated resource  of XSEDE.

Community Announcements & Events
PEARC Conference seeking nominations for 2021 General Chair, Steering Committee Members-at-Large
The PEARC Conference organization is accepting nominations for the 2021 General Chair role and PEARC Steering Committee Members-at-Large roles. If you are interested, please self-nominate or nominate someone else who might be a good fit for the
role by June 30, 2019.

CyberAmbassadors program now accepting applications
The CyberAmbassador program was developed with support from the National Science Foundation specifically to help equip cyberinfrastructure experts facilitate professional skills training workshops. Selected Fellows will be invited to attend the CyberAmbassador facilitator training workshop (July 18-19) and will help organize and facilitate at least one training workshop during their Fellowship year. Applications will close on Wednesday, June 12, and Fellows will be announced no later than Monday, June 17.

Blue Waters Petascale Computing Hackathon now accepting applications
Team applications for the   Blue Waters Petascale Computing Hackathon   are available until July 8, 2019. The Hackathon will take place September 9-13, 2019 at NCSA and will connect research teams with expert mentors to improve scientific codes and enable them to take full advantage of HPC systems. The research groups selected to participate will send teams of at least two developers along with a working application that has the potential to benefit from the petascale-class computing systems to accelerate their research productivity. The end goal is to have applications running efficiently at scale, or with a clear roadmap for enhancing code performance. 

Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) launches new data-facing track
CaRCC (the Campus Research Computing Consortium), an organization of dedicated professionals developing, advocating for, and advancing campus research computing and data and associated professions, has just announced the launch of their new data-facing track. This track will be a forum to discuss a wide range of topics related to data-enabled research, including:
  • Data science support
  • Data visualization
  • Data management and curation
  • Data workflows
  • Data transfer and networks
  • Data collection and production
  • Working with big data

People from research computing groups, libraries, research institutes, and other organizations are all welcome. If you help others compute with data, this group is for you!

Registration for the Third National Research Platform (NRP) workshop now available
Registration is now open for the Third National Research Platform (NRP) Workshop, to be held in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 24-25, 2019 at the Renaissance Downtown Minneapolis – The Depot.
 
The NRP workshop will be co-located with the NSF PI workshop (9/23-9/25) and the Quilt meeting (9/25-9/26) with some shared sessions. A Global Research Platform (GRP) Workshop will be held the week prior to the NRP workshop and it will focus on international Research Platform topics.  
 
Information about the Third NRP Workshop, hotel/travel information and the co-located events can be found at the link below. Plan to reserve your accommodations as soon as possible as lodging options that week will be limited in the downtown Minneapolis area due to other citywide events.

Upcoming Dates and Deadlines