July 2019 national eResearch newsletter

Ahead of the first Australian Research Data Alliance (RDA) plenary in 2020, the RDA and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) are collaborating to present an “RDA meet and greet Australia tour” from 22 July to 8 August.  You are cordially invited to join us for a social morning of tea, coffee and nibbles with RDA Secretary General Hilary Hanahoe, other local RDA participants and those interested in finding out more about RDA.

Tour dates & Locations:

• Canberra:  10am, 24-July.
• Melbourne:  9am, 26-July.
• Sydney:  10am, 1-August.
• Brisbane:  10am, 2-August.
• Perth:  10am, 6-August.

Register here:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/research-data-alliance-meet-and-greet-australia-tour-tickets-64706424658.

The ORCID Consortium is once again seeking feedback from AAF members.  Your feedback is important to us and will provide information to assist with planning and meeting the needs of the Consortium in the future.

To complete the survey, go to the ORCID Consortium member survey 2019 at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/orcidau2019.

The survey closes on Friday 26 July 2019 and does not collect any individually identifying information.

If you have any questions, please email orcid@aaf.edu.au.

The Australian eResearch Skilled Workforce Summit will take place on 29 and 30 July 2019 in Sydney.  It is being coordinated by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), and Universities Australia (UA).

It will address the big questions in the development of the digitally skilled workforce such as “what skills will our researchers, data or software specialists and research support staff need to survive and thrive in this new world of data-enabled research?”  Project outcomes from the ARDC Skilled Workforce Discovery Activities will also feature in the Summit.

Registration at https://ardc.edu.au/events/the-australian-eresearch-skilled-workforce-summit/.

Delighted to announce our international speaker line-up for 10th AeRO #eResearch Forum – Challenges – Blockers – Planning for Success – 31 July in Sydney.

Speaker include:

• Hilary Hanahoe, Secretary General – Research Data Alliance
• Mark Stickells, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre
• Mary Hobson, CEO, eResearch South Australia
• Anne Kealley, CEO, CAUDIT
• Kylie Brass, Director, Policy and Research – Australian Academy of Humanities
• Hamish Holewa, COO, Atlas of Living Australia
• Heath Marks, CEO, Australian Access Federation
• Ryan Winn, Director National Research Infrastructure Policy & Engagement, Department of Education
• Andrew Lonie, Director, EMBL-ABR

Spaces filling fast – register now to secure your spot!
Info:  http://aero.edu.au/forum2019/
Register:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/10th-aero-forum-2019-eresearch-challenges-blockers-and-planning-for-success-tickets-63313661867.

The Characterisation Virtual Laboratory (CVL) Community (Neuroscience, Microscopy, Structural Biology, Atom Probe, Neutron Techniques) is providing a unique opportunity to upskilling scientists and bioimaging professionals.  The CVL Champions are a community of researchers, university lecturers, and bioimaging professionals taking part in a skills development program.  The program is designed to provide guidance, methods and tips for developing and delivering quality, impactful training.

We are looking for a representative cohort of enthusiastic people, to be the leaders of the national Characterisation training network.  Applicants at all career stages are welcome to apply.  Applications close on 31 July 2019.

See https://characterisation-virtual-laboratory.github.io/CVL_Community/champions/.

The monthly Tech Talk for August, at various live locations around Australia (usually followed by refreshments and networking), will be held on Friday, 2 August from 3pm AEST, on the topic Cloud Applications for Research Data Management (RDM).

Speakers will include Arcitecta talking about Mediaflux, and QCIF talking about Redbox in the Cloud.

See https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/ for more details (available soon!), and to register.

In its third year, the jointly organized forum combines thought leadership talks with immersive breakout sessions across HPC and AI domain and disciplines, breakthrough research, state-of-the-art technologies and advanced initiatives.

The agenda for the HPC-AI Advisory Council Perth Conference to be held at the Duxton Hotel on the 27-28 August 2019 is taking shape, but we can confirm that DK Panda, Rob Farber, and Jean M Favre will be part of this year’s line-up of speakers.  The Call for Contributed Talks & Tutorials is still open.

More information and registration (open until 30 July 2019) at https://pawsey.org.au/event/hpc-ai-perth-conference-27-28-august-2019/.

This year eResearch Australia has a great line-up of workshops on offer including community-based networking, deep technical content, and specialist skills development.  Workshops will “bookend” the conference on Monday 21 and Friday 25 October.  Always a popular component of the conference, and with limited spaces available, we recommend registering as soon as possible to secure your spot.

Workshop schedule (including full workshop abstracts) is available at https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2019-registration/.

Macquarie University, one of Australia’s leading research universities, recently connected to Australian Access Federation’s (AAF) cloud solution, Rapid Identity Provider (Rapid IdP).  For Macquarie, Rapid IdP positively changed the way the organisation operates.  Grant Sayer, Director of Infrastructure and Applications at Macquarie, claims that with Rapid IdP “applications system admins can now spend more time on other business value initiatives.”

If you would like to experience the benefits of Rapid IdP and move your organisation to the cloud, contact the AAF today.

See https://aaf.edu.au/news/index.html#rapid.

We are pleased to announce that the 11th DMF User Group Meeting will be held Thursday 29th – Friday 30th August at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth, Australia.  Pawsey is located at 13 Burvill Court, Kensington.

The DMF Users Group was started in 2009 to provide a forum for sites using HPE’s Data Management Framework (formerly SGI’s Data Migration Facility) HSM software, in order to provide assistance and encouragement to each other, and to provide feedback to HPE.

Further details can be found at https://hpc.csiro.au/users/dmfug/Meeting_201908/Invitation.html.

Registrations will open soon for Sydney’s Research Bazaar (ResBaz), a low-cost, 4-day intensive festival and conference (Tues 10 – Fri 13 Sep 2019), where researchers come together to up-skill in next generation digital research tools.  ResBaz is a highly participatory event where researchers from many different disciplines can learn, share knowledge and skills, and have fun.

Visit the website for details and to join the mailing list for updates.  See: https://resbaz.github.io/resbaz2019/sydney/.

Federation University Australia’s Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) has collaborated with documentary film makers Wind & Sky Productions on a new film about Data Democracy.  Launched in April, the Data Democracy film examines the current debate about the accumulation, federation and aggregation of public and private data.  The film features leading experts Paul Box (CSIRO), Associate Professor Peter Dahlhaus (CeRDI), George Fong (ex-Internet Australia), Professor Richard Sinnott (University of Melbourne) and Dr Gillian Sparkes (Victorian Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability) who discuss the issues pertaining to fairness, access, sharing and communicating data in the current technological era.

See http://www.cerdi.edu.au/DataDemocracy.

Over a 10-week period between Monday, 25 November 2019 to Friday, 14 February 2020, Pawsey will host a group of talented undergraduate students to participate in projects related to high-performance computing (HPC).

We are calling for Australian researchers to submit project proposals for these students to undertake.

Researchers from all domains and from across Australia are encouraged to apply.
Note: Researchers do not need to be current Pawsey users. Pawsey will grant modest resource allocation to successful projects.

Read more: https://pawsey.org.au/2019-pawsey-summer-internships-call-for-projects/.

The call is now open for applications for collaborative projects with Pawsey uptake staff, focused on improving software and workflows at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

This call is open to all researchers in Australia meeting the criteria described in the Information for Applicants.  Projects that do not have current Pawsey Supercomputing allocations may be granted a Director’s Share allocation to enable the project.

The focus of these uptake projects is to improve the performance of applications that use or potentially could make use of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre compute resources.

Read more:  https://pawsey.org.au/2019-pawsey-uptake-call-for-projects/.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is pleased to host Dr Rob Farber who is a recognized global technology leader (US, Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific), and in-demand as a technology/scientific advisor, teacher, and collaborator.

Rob will be in Perth on the 29th August to conduct a one-day workshop on CUDA programming.  Rob is the author of CUDA Application Design and Development and Parallel Programming with OpenACC.

Target Audience:

• Participants should be comfortable compiling code and running executables in a Linux environment.
• Some experience with C/C++ is also required.
• Coding exercises will be performed on dedicated Azure instances

Register here:  https://pawsey.org.au/event/eoi-for-cuda-programming-workshop-29th-august-2019/.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is hosting Dr Michael Bauer who is a principal software engineer at Sylabs and was integral in the development of Singularity.  Michael will be in Perth on the 30th August to conduct a training session on Introduction to Singularity.

If there is sufficient demand, this training course can be extended to a full day.  Please indicate if you are interested in a full day session when completing the form below.

Target Audience:

• Participants should be comfortable navigating a Linux environment.
• Prior Docker or other container environment is advantageous but not required

Register here:  https://pawsey.org.au/event/eoi-for-intro-to-singularity-training-course/.

In the past year CSIRO, in partnership with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Geoscience Australia, the Department of Finance and the National Archives of Australia, has produced two demonstration data “spines”.

These are LocI:  The Location Index (http://locationindex.org);  and LongSpine:  The Longitudinal Spine of Government Functions (http://longspine.cat).

These act as collections of reference data for spatial (LocI) and government structure (LongSpine) information.  Their goals are to assist analysts in using authoritative reference data which will save time and effort and to ensure their data are interoperable with other data if they too use the spines.

In 2009, student admissions were at a record high, as study options broadened and university IT systems struggled to keep up with the demand.  After positive experiences interconnecting WiFi via eduroam, the Council of Australasian University IT Directors (CAUDIT) agreed that a centralised access federation would be a national solution to these problems.

Now enabling global access for Australian researchers, the AAF is considered a crucial part of the national research infrastructure system.

Learn more about how the AAF began on the website https://aaf.edu.au/news/index.html#origins.

Galaxy Australia won three trophies at the Australian Information Industry Association’s (AIIA) Queensland state iAwards on Tuesday, 4 June, including the top prize, the Queensland Premier’s iAward for Public Sector Innovation.

Galaxy Australia is a free, web-accessible platform to enable genetic scientists across the globe to test, evaluate and peer review their work, bringing the next cure for chronic disease within reach.

QCIF and its bioinformatics arm Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics, together with the University of Melbourne’s Melbourne Bioinformatics, and the University of Queensland’s Research Computing Centre jointly built and operate Galaxy Australia.

Full story – http://bit.ly/2XKwNuG.

The University of Queensland is hosting a public lecture and workshop series on reproducibility and responsible research conduct, featuring Professor Michael Kalichman from the University of California.

In conjunction with these events, a staged reading of UQ Research Computing Centre Director Professor David Abramson’s play Purely Academic will be held featuring some well-known UQ senior academics.  Purely Academic invites an honest discussion about professional ethics and practices in academia today.

Read more:  https://rcc.uq.edu.au/event/2681/reproducibility-and-responsible-research-conduct-professor-michael-kalichman-university.

An App initially developed at HealthHack Brisbane in 2017, has won this year’s top Queensland Health eAward.  The end-of-life care App is for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

This year’s HealthHack is scheduled for the weekend of 20-22 September at ThoughtWorks in Brisbane’s CBD.

Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/575-healthhack-app-wins-qld-health-eaward.

Amanda Miotto, QCIF’s eResearch Analyst at Griffith University, has made her and her colleague’s Data Storytelling workshop slides publicly available, which you can use to run your own workshop.

Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/eresearch-tips/577-run-your-own-data-storytelling-workshop-or-learn-about-our-tips.

AeRO provides details of the latest eResearch job opportunities in the sector.  Jobs are posted immediately to https://twitter.com/AeRO_eResearch, and the website at http://aero.edu.au/jobs/ is also updated.

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

Here’s a sample of current vacancies:  Data Engineer, Data Innovation Program Manager, Social Analytics Lab Systems Coordinator, Digital Environment Manager, Data Analytics Research Leader, Machine Learning Data Scientist, Identity Software Developer, Multiple eResearch Analyst Positions.