a Research Facilitator A Day in the Life of a Research Facilitator Caroline Gardiner Academic Research Facilitator University of Bristol

Research Facilitator = the “glue” Tying together education and training, promotion and marketing, outreach activities, identifying resource needs and understanding future developments/requirements  building a community

Overview Background to the role Bristol HPC - facts and figures A typical day… Relationship building  community building Issues, benefits and challenges The future

Background to the role Project to establish central High Performance Computing (HPC) facility began 2004 Increasing need for computing “beyond the desktop” across many disciplines Identified need for HPC Research Facilitator to provide the “glue” My background - NOT traditional HPC Started October 2006, a few months before “BlueCrystal” went live to users

Bristol HPC – facts and figures Ranked 66th in Top500 http://www.top500.org/ June 2008; 238th, November 2009 2 machines – total 3700 processors; 2 machine rooms 264 users and 146 projects - 5 of 6 faculties Petascale storage facility in course of installation

HPC Management - supporting facilitation Board Pro Vice-Chancellors (Research, Learning & Teaching), Deans of Science & Engineering, Registrar, Bursar, Director IS, Director of ISYS, Permanent members of Exec Executive 2 permanent members 4 rotating members from User Group Non-exec member: Research Facilitator Storage Board HPC Exec Nominated Storage stakeholders Technical Advisory Board HPC SysAdmins Nominated HPC stakeholders Permanent members of Exec External HPC experts ACRC Director 2 x HPC SysAdmins Storage SysAdmin Research Facilitator User Group HPC Stakeholders Permanent members of Exec

What is research facilitation? Promoting HPC across all faculties and beyond Supporting non-traditional users First point of contact Identifying future research data storage and HPC requirements Gathering information to support continued investment Relationship building  community building

A typical day … the morning 8 Contact new user in Physiology and offer support Give presentation to group in Economics Plan next HPC symposium and contact speakers Update website http://www.bris.ac.uk/acrc with news item featuring an award for research undertaken on BlueCrystal

A typical day… the afternoon Organise training course in Perl programming Meet with Pro Vice-Chancellor Research and provide information for next HPC Board meeting Analyse results of user survey Attend meeting putting together cross faculty bid to AHRC

Relationship building

Community building From these relationships, an HPC community is being built: Workshops - termly programme Mailing list/discussion board Re:search - HPC-themed, March 2008 Press releases/features on University website Formal opening May ’08 Symposia and seminars Molecular dynamic simulation of a single molecule of polyethylene being drawn from a crystal in an atomic force microscope - courtesy of Dr Simon Hanna, Department of Physics

Collaboration Encourage collaboration between researchers: JISC Research Data Management Infrastructure call UK Research Data Service (UKRDS) – Pathfinder projects and SDF bid Bring researchers together from different disciplines Exabyte Informatics Lecturer in HPC appointed 2009 Image of penguins courtesy of Dr Tilo Burghardt

Conclusions What works/benefits of the role Relationship building Meeting an identified need Information gathering Helps to justify funding and make case for future investment What does not work/challenges of the role “Cold calling” Failing to understand potential users’ requirements Making machine accessible for Windows users Overcoming barriers

The future… More users from non-traditional disciplines External users? Academic HPC course planned for 2010-11 BlueCrystal phases 3 and 4 being planned Storage – annual expansion planned Beyond Bristol – leading HPC-SIG Research Facilitation focus group Will all require more research facilitation!

Machine room images courtesy of Timo Kunkel Any Questions? Machine room images courtesy of Timo Kunkel