February 2016 national eResearch newsletter

2016 AeRO National Forum: 16 March 2016, Canberra.
The annual one-day AeRO National Forum attracts senior staff from its members as well as eResearch leads from institutions, NCRIS capabilities, discipline communities, funding bodies, government and other agencies. In 2015 ( www.aero.edu.au/forum-2015) we had 4 speakers, over 85 attendees from 55 organisations, several hours of excellent discussions, and we expect this year to be even bigger.

A key objective for this year’s forum is to develop further input to the Government’s eResearch Framework Project led by Dr Rhys Francis. This framework itself needs to fit within the emerging National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) and the Australian Research Infrastructure strategy (the ‘Phil Clark Review’). It will also help to guide and shape AeRO’s future.

Dr Rhys Francis will be there, and we are confirming a number of other speakers.

More details at http://www.aero.edu.au/forums

Dr Markus Buchhorn, AeRO CEO.

——
Melbourne Science Hackfest 4-6 March.
More information has now been made available on the Weekend Science Hackfest, organised by ANDS, CSIRO, NeCTAR, TERN, ALA, AURIN, RDS, IMOS, AuScope and University of Melbourne. You can organise your team beforehand or come along and find a team at the event to win three prizes (the first prize for $2,000, the second prize for $1,000 and the third prize for $500). A new webpage has recently been published with details about the types of ideas and datasets the event will be working with. Please spread the word to anybody who might be interested to help make this event a real success.

Date:  4-6 March
Venue:  Lab 14, Carlton Connect, University of Melbourne, 700 Swanston Street, Carlton VIC 3053
Webpage and registration (free):  http://sciencehackau.github.io/melbourne/

——
eRSA – New Year, New Look.
To welcome in the New Year, we’ve decided to evolve our brand and logo. We’ve also simplified our name from eResearch SA to eRSA.

In conjunction with our new look, we’re also rolling out a series of new training workshops.

We are hosting our first  workshop, Running a Virtual Machine in the Cloud on 25 February 2016. For more information on the workshop and how to register, click HERE. If you know any colleagues who may benefit, please forward the link onto them also.

We look forward to continuing to support research throughout 2016!

More information about eRSA and its services can be seen at https://www.ersa.edu.au/.

——
VLSCI Facility Manager Departs Australia for Finland.
In more than 3 years as VLSCI’s Facility Manager, Dr Vera Hansper has overseen many developments to improve services for life scientists using VLSCI computers. Vera was also instrumental in founding the HPC User Support Tools (HUST) workshops held at the annual US Supercomputing conferences, which aim to increase the collaboration between supercomputing centres by providing a platform to present tools, share best practices and exchange ideas that help streamline user support in complex HPC facilities. For further details: https://www.vlsci.org.au/Vera-leaves-VLSCI

——

ORCID Launch.
ORCID Launches on 15-Feb-16 in Canberra with 40 members.

ORCID aims to solve the author/contributor name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications.

For more information, see orcid.org

——
OpenCloudMesh Project Achieves its First Key Milestone.
The first demonstration of a Federated Cloud Sharing interface of ownCloud server (v8.x) between four independent administrative sync&share service domains was achieved at the Cloud Services for Synchronisation and Sharing (CS3) workshop, organised by CERN on 18-19 January 2016 in Zurich, Switzerland. This was a key milestone of the OpenCloudMesh (OCM) project.

This enabled users to sync and share files and folders between independent service domains operated within the HE sectors of Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Australia.

OpenCloudMesh (OCM) is a joint international initiative co-managed by GANT, CERN and ownCloud Inc. with the vision to define an open standard-based protocol that takes universal file access beyond the borders of individual clouds and into a globally interconnected mesh of research clouds without sacrificing any of the advantages in privacy, control and security that on-premises cloud provides.

For more information, see http://news.aarnet.edu.au/the-opencloudmesh-project-achieves-its-first-key-milestone/

——
Online Farm Trials: Knowledge, Technology and Smarter Farming.
The Online Farm Trials (OFT; www.farmtrials.com.au) project began in late 2013 with the principal objective to help improve the productivity and sustainability of farming enterprises by improving access to trial research information. It achieves this through two online research applications, the Trial Explorer and the Report Library.

Supported by the Grains Research and Development Corporation ( GRDC), the project is led by a team at Federation University Australia’s Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovative ( CeRDI, and has strong engagement with grower groups, research organisations, agricultural experts and grain industry organisations.

The OFT project unlocks data from the farm trials research that has previously been accessible only via hard copy or basic electronic documents, opening up information from cropping trials conducted across Australia in all three GRDC regions.

For further information about OFT visit: www.farmtrials.com.au.  Or contact CeRDI’s Rob Milne: r.milne@federation.edu.au