August 2018 National eResearch Newsletter

Melbourne, it’s your turn! Come and connect with academics and industry professionals working in EcoSciences at our Pathways Forum on Friday 17 August 2018 (#EcoPathways18). A great opportunity to learn more about existing digital infrastructure, contemporary data and management practices for environmental science; also for the EcoScience community to have their say on better integration of digital technologies in courses and training programs, and how the community can collaborate to advance research practices into management decisions.

More info & registration: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/melbourne-ecoscience-pathways-forum-tickets-47941072037.

EMBL-ABR’s new 2018 webinar series is attracting interest from across Australia.  With thanks to ARDC, recordings will be online within a week after each event.

21 AUGUST, 12:00-13:00 AEST: Prof Rochelle Tractenberg, Georgetown University, USA:   Teaching and training: lessons from education and cognitive science to promote learning.

Visiting EMBL-ABR International Scientific Advisory Group member Prof Tractenberg will discuss findings of a 2017 study of “bootcamp” type training in data science/technology that was aimed at doctoral-level graduate students in the US.

Register here:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/289650237669423619.

Ideas for topics or speaker suggestions are welcome – just email us from the link on our Webinar page (https://www.embl-abr.org.au/), and please subscribe to EMBL-ABR news from our home page or follow us on Twitter @EMBL_ABR to hear about future webinar topics.

The Agenda for the 2018 HPC AI Advisory Council conference has been released – see http://hpcadvisorycouncil.com/events/2018/australia-conference/agenda.php.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is host to this Conference, taking place 28th and 29th August in Fremantle, Western Australia.

A powerful international dialogue session has been added to the second annual conference agenda, featuring an impressive list of leading HPC centres and industry representatives. This year’s program also includes a wide variety of invited and contributed talks on high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge research and development (R&D) from industry notables throughout the region and beyond.

Two important deadlines are looming for this annual conference, to take place in Melbourne this year, from 15 to 19 October.  See https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/.

Closing Date for Solution Showcase proposals, Posters and (NEW!!) ePosters is 24 August.  See https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/abstract-submission/.

Closing date for Early-bird and Presenter registration is 7 September.  See https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2018-registration/.

Learn about how Australian funders are using ORCID and buy your ticket to the ORCID Future Directions Forum on 6-Sep-18 in Canberra today.
Hear from;

• Justin Withers, Director of Research Policy about the future of ORCID at the Australian Research Council (ARC).
• Daniel Dimoski, Project Manager at National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) will discuss how ORCID is simplifying grant applications.

Visit the webpage to view the full program https://aaf.edu.au/news/events.html.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are offering training and User Forum in supercomputing, data and cloud topics at the University of Adelaide on September 3 & 4.

• Welcome from eResearch South Australia (eRSA)/Introduction to Pawsey
• Introduction to Unix
• Nimbus research cloud training
• Containerising Workflows
• Introductory Supercomputing
• User Forum.

Click here to register for training:  https://www.pawsey.org.au/event/pawsey-training-adelaide-5-6-september-2018/.

The User Forum is where you can discuss your experiences at Pawsey, its systems and services.  This may include the full project lifecycle of application, allocation management, usage, and reporting for the various supercomputing, data, cloud and visualisation systems that Pawsey operates.

Continuing the successful Digital Humanities series of events, the Hobart DH Pathways Forum will bring together humanities, arts and social science (HASS) researchers and the cultural collecting sector (galleries, libraries, archives and museums, GLAM) professionals to speak about the links between research, data, and national infrastructure, and to find out about contemporary data and technology-intensive research and collection practices.

Places are limited and we think it will book out pretty quickly, which is great! Looking forward to an interesting day of presentations and discussion.

Register via Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/hobart-digital-humanities-pathways-forum-2018-your-pathway-to-the-latest-innovative-eresearch-tools-tickets-48581111412.

The FIRST joint Pawsey-COMBINE Bioinformatics symposium is coming to Perth on September 6-7;  we are looking for Bioinformatics PhD students, post-docs and early career researchers to join us!

This domain’s expert scientists from WA will be there to share their latest research, as well as ideas on methods, tools and best practices to everyone interested.

In addition to this, the team at Pawsey will be running a Bioinformatics focused workshop, giving you the opportunity to catch up and practice some of the newest computing technologies in the field.

Click here to register, learn about the presenters and workshop topics:  https://www.pawsey.org.au/event/bioinformatics-symposium-2018/.

The next distributed ANDS Tech Talk will be held on Fri, 7 September, 15:00 to 17:00 (AEST), with attendees present at one of 9 hub venues around the country and online (details below).

Details of this month’s topic and speakers TBA; then the registration page will be set up in Eventbrite, accessible from the meetup page below.

Presentation slides from previous TechTalks are available from this page: https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/about/.

For more and latest information about this Monthly Tech Talk event, please visit the event page at the MeetUp: https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/.

Looking to boost your professional development?  With a record 13 workshops to choose from this year – there’s something for everyone!

Dive into the amazing lineup of audience-specific workshops delivered by leading eResearch specialists on topics including eResearch Leaders, eResearch Collaboration, Galaxy, ARDC 101, ARDC Nectar containers, MyTardis FAIR data, Juypter Notebook, DevOps, Systems Administration, Research Software Engineers (RSEs), RedBox2, CloudStor, and Git + Docker.

You can view the full workshop extracts at https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2018-workshops/.

A reminder that some workshops have limited spots so register now to avoid disappointment!

In just 48 hours at last year’s Health Hack Brisbane event, a prototype app for tracking Motor Neuron Disease patient symptoms was made. The “Show Me MND” prototype helped to secure $770,000 in NHMRC Partnership funding, which includes plans to build upon and roll out the app nationally.

Since Health Hack Brisbane began in 2013, many projects seeded at the data hackathon have either gone on to receive substantial further investment, or have formed the basis of grant applications.

This year’s Health Hack Brisbane is scheduled to take place over the weekend of 14-16 September. Participants and sponsors are being sought. Read more: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2018/08/health-hack-brisbane-projects-receive-funding.

Researchers from The Australian National University, along with international colleagues, have used a combination of ocean modelling and genetic data to transform our understanding of Antarctica’s ecological isolation and ocean drift.  Read more: http://nci.org.au/research/antarctica-not-isolated/.

NCRIS facilities, such as QCIF and TERN, are supporting the Australian Threatened Species Index project. The UQ-led project is developing a tool to allow holistic reporting on the broad status of Australia’s biodiversity, as is routinely done for the economy.

Australia currently does not have national reporting on threatened species trends, a situation that has major policy and management consequences.

Read more: https://www.qriscloud.org.au/about-qriscloud/case-studies/item/85-qriscloud-supports-globally-significant-australian-threatened-species-index-project.

In the first two successful Pathways forums in Canberra and Perth, eRSA brought EcoScience academics, government bodies and industry members together for a series of collaborative discussions.

Forming part of the EcoScience Data Enhanced Virtual Laboratory/Research Data Cloud (DEVL RDC) project, these forums ignited discussion around current digital collaboration trends, emerging needs for training and skills development and exploration into future opportunities for the EcoScience space.

Read more at https://www.ersa.edu.au/ecoscience-perth-and-canberra-providing-new-insights-for-south-australia/.

The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) will lead a major new NCRIS-supported research infrastructure project to allow Australian researchers and policy makers to analyse the next generation of international climate data.

Read more: http://nci.org.au/2018/07/20/virtual-laboratory-manage-biggest-climate-data-yet/.

Daniel Baird has joined the QCIF team as a James Cook University-based eResearch Analyst.

Daniel’s background is in software engineering, particularly user interfaces and design, and he has degrees in both psychology and computer science.

Before joining JCU’s eResearch Centre in 2012, he was a Chief Technology Officer at a tech’ start-up, building a massively distributed compiler.

Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/461-daniel-baird-joins-qcif-as-an-eresearch-analyst-for-jcu.

An exciting addition to the speakers list for DHA 2018 is Mahendra Mahey, the Project Manager on the British Library Labs, a funded initiative which supports and inspires the use of the British Library’s digital collection and data in exciting and innovative ways.

Mahendra will be sharing on the building of this initiative, the experiences and lessons learned from this project as well as insights from engaging with researchers, artists, educators and entrepreneurs who have used digitised cultural heritage collects and data.

Meet the DHA 2018 speakers: https://www.ersa.edu.au/dha2018/#speakers.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is now opening a call for student internship projects.
Over a 10-week period between November 2018 and February 2019, Pawsey will host a group of talented undergraduate students (3rd & 4th year and honours students) to participate in projects related to high-performance computing.

Project proposals can be submitted by any Pawsey researcher, but the project must utilise Pawsey resources and demonstrate a focus in one (or more) of the following areas:

• High Performance Computing
• Cloud computing
• Data analytics
• Large scale data storage
• Machine learning
• High-speed interconnects/communication
• Scientific visualisation

To submit your registrations, click here:  https://www.pawsey.org.au/internationship-project-application-2018-2019/.

Hosted by the Botswana Open Science and Open Data Forum and co-organized by the ICSU World Data System (WDS), the ICSU Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA), the Research Data Alliance (RDA), University of Botswana (UoB) and the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), IDW 2018 combines the 12th RDA Plenary Meeting, the bi-annual meeting of the research data community, and SciDataCon 2018, the scientific conference addressing the frontiers of data in research, bringing together data scientists, researchers, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers and data stewards from many disciplines and geographies.

Visit http://www.internationaldataweek.org/ for more information.

Don’t forget that AeRO is helping spread the word on the latest eResearch job opportunities.  We post jobs immediately to https://twitter.com/AeRO_eResearch and also update on our website at http://aero.edu.au/eresearch-careers/.

This is a free service for the eResearch community – to advertise a position, simply email loretta@aero.edu.au.

Current vacancies include:  a Bioinformatics Support Specialist, a Specialist Scientific Programmer, a Digital Humanities Professor, a Data Analytics Web Developer, a Research Data Support Officer, a Research DevOps, Cloud Computing and HPC experts, Associate Director Digital Strategy, a Data Centre Engineer, a Bioinformatician, a Senior Cloud Services Product Manager, and an ORCiD Membership Specialist.