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

2. 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

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

4. 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

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

6. 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

7. 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

8. A typical day … the morning8
Contact new user in Physiology and offer support
Give presentation to group in Economics
Plan next HPC symposium and contact speakers
Update website with news item featuring an award for research undertaken on BlueCrystal

9. 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

10. Relationship building

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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

14. The future… More users from non-traditional disciplines
External users?
Academic HPC course planned for
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!

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