April 2017 national eResearch newsletter
Welcome to the April AeRO eResearch Newsletter
From the AeRO CEO
The 2017 AeRO National Forum is nearly upon us: 4-May-17 in Canberra! It will once again bring together a broad cross-section of the leadership of the eResearch service and support sector, together with the wider research community, national agencies and government.
The theme this year is “Thriving in the data-driven research world”, spanning the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap, a potential Australian Research Data Cloud (ARDC), and beyond. In the face of the data deluge, what do the next ten years imply, how do we prepare? Enrol soon, as this event is filling up quickly! http://aero.edu.au/forums/
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ANDS Tech Talk for May: Serverless Architectures
The monthly Tech Talk for May, at various live locations around Australia, will be held on Fri 5 May 3-5pm AEST, on the topic Serverless Architectures. Serverless architectures are gaining prominence in the tech community for their scalability and reduced operational costs. These architectures remove some of the need for a traditional server sitting behind an application. This topic will include speakers sharing their experiences and advice on the benefits and pitfalls of going serverless. Speakers TBA. |
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ANDS Health & Medical Data Webinar Series
ANDS is hosting a series of three 30 minutes lunchtime in May which aim to support better management and publication of Health and Medical data. The sessions are free and open to everybody, especially Medical librarians, Researchers in Medical Research Institutes & Universities, Clinician researchers at hospitals, and Research students. #1 Funders and Publishers: Tue 9 May, 12:30pm-1pm AEST. For further information, including speakers, and registration, see http://www.ands.org.au/news-and-events/presentations/2017/webinars-health-and-medical?ct=t(andsUP_14MAR_2017) |
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NCRIS Symposium on Greater Impact Through Environmental Infrastructure To celebrate the tenth anniversary of NCRIS, the environment and eResearch infrastructure facilities are joining together to host this Symposium at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, from 16 to 18 May.The event will showcase and celebrate the achievements and impacts that have come about thanks to the investment in environmental research infrastructure and the supporting eResearch infrastructure. In addition, the Symposium will provide an opportunity to shape future innovations and foster new collaborations.Symposium partners: ALA, AURIN, AuScope, BioPlatforms Australia, IMOS, NCRIS Groundwater, TERN, ANDS, NeCTAR, RDS. See https://impactsymposium2017.wordpress.com |
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IEEE eScience 2017 – Call for Papers
The 13th International Conference on eScience 2017, due to take place at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand from 24 – 27 October 2017, welcomes submissions for papers for inclusion in the conference programme. The objective of the eScience Conference is to promote and encourage all aspects of eScience and its associated technologies, applications, and tools. Key Dates: We look forward to receiving your submission and welcoming you to Auckland in 2017. |
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Submit Your Story of Using the Cloud
At the forthcoming OpenStack Day (June 1st), NeCTAR is looking to highlight case studies on how OpenStack Infrastructure (eg The Nectar Research Cloud) supports research and innovation. Do you have a virtual lab on the Nectar cloud? Are you utilising “big data” and/or “machine learning” with OpenStack? NeCTAR would like to invite you to submit a proposal to tell your story (which will be video recorded and promoted via the OpenStack Foundation to its +50k members): See: http://australiaday.openstack.org.au/speaker-submission/ or http://australiaday.openstack.org.au/ |
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NeSI’s National Platform Procurement Plans
NeSI (New Zealand eScience Infrastructure) is preparing to replace its NIWA IBM P575/POWER6 and Auckland IBM iDataPlex x86 platforms. Procurement runs to the end of Q2 2017, with implementation and user migration completed early 2018. The design for the new platforms was built collaboratively, driven from sector input on needs and consideration of current and potential future gaps in service. In addition to providing newer, faster supercomputers, there will also be a major increase in research data storage capability, designed for end-to-end workflows across institutional boundaries, virtual research laboratories, and remote visualisation services. See: https://www.nesi.org.nz/news/2017/03/nesis-national-platform-procurement-plans |
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Increasing Cancer Research Impact Cancer Therapeutics Cooperative Research Centre – CTx is supported by the Australian Government CRC Programme that supports industry-led collaborations between industry, researchers and the community. CTx is focused on the discovery and development of novel cancer drugs for children and adults and provides a global research and development platform to facilitate access to class-leading analysis and advanced visualisation tools as well as access to 30TB of cancer research data – all facilitated via the NeCTAR Research Cloud.See https://nectar.org.au/increasing-cancer-research-impact-migration-success-story/ |
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QCIF Announce New CEO
Dr Phil Gurney (pictured) will become QCIF’s new CEO on Tuesday, 2 May 2017. Phil succeeds Rob Cook, who announced last year that he intended to step down after seven years as QCIF’s CEO. Phil has a strong track record in research management, innovation and commercialisation of new technologies. His career spans a broad range of sectors including e-health, manufacturing, biomedical, telecoms, IT, defence and consultancy, with the common theme being identifying and obtaining the best commercial outcomes from R&D projects, and managing research teams to succeed in the broader competitive industry environment. Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/268-dr-phil-gurney-announced-as-qcif-s-new-ceo |
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Networkshop in Melbourne, 22 to 23-Jun-17 This is a reminder about Networkshop, a two-day national forum run by AARNet for technologists working on networking and/or networked technologies at AARNet-connected universities and research institutions. This is a technical community-building event with an emphasis on technical collaboration, skills development and the exchange of ideas. It will be held at the Victoria University City Convention Centre, Level 12, 300 Flinders Street, Melbourne.Registration is now open. To see the draft program or to register, visit https://networkshop.aarnet.edu.au/ |
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FileSender (CloudStor Sender) is First Project for The Commons Conservancy Initiative
The Commons Conservancy was launched last October to provide a lightweight organisational structure for open projects, especially in the HE sector. The first project to move through The Commons Conservancy process is FileSender, which is widely used globally, and was jointly developed by AARNet, UNINETT and HEANet. Guido Aben is on the Board of the Conservancy. GÉANT supports this effort through a joint memorandum of understanding (MoU) with The Commons Conservancy and its financial partner NLnet Foundation. The GÉANT community working group SIG-Greenhouse fosters this cooperation. |
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Open Repositories Conference 2017
The annual international Open Repositories Conference brings together users and developers of open digital repository platforms from higher education, government, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. The Conference provides an interactive forum for delegates from around the world to come together and explore the global challenges and opportunities facing libraries and the broader scholarly information landscape. The conference will take place from 26 to 30 June at the Hilton, Brisbane, and is hosted by the University of Queensland (UQ), Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Griffith University. For more information and registration, go to: https://or2017.net/ |
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The Data Life Cycle On Friday April 7 EMBL-ABR’s Open Data Coordinator, Dr Philippa Griffin, was invited to present at the monthly Nectar, ANDS and RDS “Tech Talk”, a webinar program for data technologists and developers.With the “Data Life Cycle” as the topic, Pip talked about her experiences as a life science researcher dealing with large, heterogeneous datasets, some of the tools available to help with sharing and reuse of biological data, and some challenges faced by life science researchers in achieving good practice in this area.Her slides are available here: https://www.embl-abr.org.au/presentations/ |
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13th IEEE International Conference on eScience 2017
This conference will be hosted in Auckland, New Zealand, 24-27 October at the Crowne Plaza. We’re working with international leaders in eScience, HPC, digital research, bringing together a broad range of research communities from across the globe, including leading international and interdisciplinary research communities, developers, and users of eScience applications and enabling IT technologies. If you are interested in sponsoring this high profile international event, we’re happy to discuss options which might work best for your organisation and fit well with our goals. |
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European e-Infrastructure Guides Released
e-IRG (the European e-Infrastructure Reflection Group) has published an updated version of its “Guide to e-Infrastructure Requirements for European Research Infrastructures” (see http://e-irg.eu/guidelines). Although aimed primarily at proposers for the ESFRI 2018 Roadmap (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), this document is also valuable for readers from other domains interested in e-Infrastructures in Europe and in other national and international initiatives. e-IRG has also published the document “Evaluation of e-Infrastructures and the Development of Related Key Performance Indicators” (KPI document, see http://e-irg.eu/kpi). This document provides a framework for evaluating e-Infrastructures. |
Contributions
This newsletter is based on contributions provided by members of the eResearch community, and draws on news articles and newsletters published across the sector. The Newsletter is published around the 16th of each month. Please send any contributions (max. 150 words, plus a link and image) or pointers to any other relevant articles or newsletters to editor@aero.edu.au
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—AeRO Newsletter Editor
