March 2018 National eResearch Newsletter

AARNet has provided Swinburne University of Technology with a 100Gbps connection for the powerful new OzSTAR supercomputer, which was officially launched on 7 March.  This new ultra-fast network connection will meet the massive data transfer needs of astronomers across Australia, who will use OzSTAR to analyse data and search for black holes, explosions in space and gravitational waves.  AARNet CEO Chris Hancock says the astronomy community is a heavy-duty user of AARNet, supporting cross-institutional and global collaborations and giving the scientists the head room they need from a network.

See more at https://news.aarnet.edu.au/lightning-fast-100gbps-aarnet-connection-for-new-ozstar-supercomputer/.

The National Computational Infrastructure is running an HPC Autumn Session from the 9th to the 13th of April.  It will cover beginner and advanced methods for accessing and using HPC resources, particularly for postgraduate research students and experienced research staff who wish to learn more about Raijin, job scripting, parallel programming, application optimisation and coding for GPUs.  All current and future NCI users are encouraged to attend, either for individual days or for the entire week

More information and the registration form is available at http://bit.ly/AutumnSession.

The next monthly Tech Talk (virtually and at locations around Australia) will be held at 15:00-16:00 AEST on Friday, 6-Apr-18.  The topic and speakers are yet to be announced.

Keep an eye on the Meetup page for further information, at https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/.

The CAUDIT Leadership Institute is a dynamic, immersive program designed to enhance the leadership skills of information technology, library and eResearch professionals within higher education who aspire to senior leadership positions.  The program delivers strong emphasis on strategic thinking, decision making, innovation and change, relationship building and communication.

For 20 years this incredible program has been developed and delivered by the sector for the sector with over 800 graduates!  You could be part of the 2018 cohort.

Find out more information and how to apply at https://www.caudit.edu.au/caudit-leadership-institute-cli.  Applications close 17 May 2018.

Galaxy is a major feature of the Australian-made Genomics Virtual Laboratory supporting computational biology research.  NCRIS funding has been granted to QCIF and Melbourne Bioinformatics to extend and update the service model for Galaxy across Australia, giving researchers increased tool and reference genome choice and user support.

In mid-March Melbourne Bioinformatics’ resident Galaxy guru, Simon Gladman, is attending the ELIXIR Galaxy community meeting in Freiburg, Germany for the official launch of the https://usegalaxy.eu/ server and to announce the upcoming Galaxy Australia server – https://usegalaxy.org.au/galaxy.

Follow the news on @GalaxyAustralia and go to https://www.embl-abr.org.au/galaxyaustralia/ for project updates.

In 2017, CAUDIT established the Research Support Community of Practice.

The Community provides a dedicated forum for all those engaged in supporting eResearch (regardless of profession) in Higher Education in Australia and New Zealand to engage, share and identify opportunities for collaboration.  The ‘self-supporting’ model allows the members of the Community to build the agenda and drive discussions.  Initially established from within the CAUDIT and CAUL membership, the Community has grown to include other organisations integral to the eResearch sector such as AeRO, AARNet and Nectar.

Join CAUDIT Research Support Community at https://www.caudit.edu.au/communities.

An exciting partnership between CSIRO Mineral Resources postdoctoral researcher, Anusuriya Devaraju, and a number of IMT teams results in a notable enhancement to the DAP.  Enter the Recommender System, designed to help find similar content based on a range of weighted criteria.

Check out this software collection in DAP, https://doi.org/10.4225/08/5a56c7a9e4c2a, which shows the two categories delivered by the Recommender System: Similar Collections, based on matching metadata, and Others Were Also Interested In, based on usage data.

The UMelb Digital Studio is launching a seminar series that will chart a 240 minute marathon course across the research terrain of a global digital society.  See http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/research/digital-studio/digital-humanities-marathon.

Six distinguished thought leaders will “run” for 40 minutes each over the semester, beginning 1.00pm on Wednesday 14 March with Professor Kim Vincs from Swinburne University of Technology, who will explore the connection of embodiment and data in contemporary Industry 4.0 contexts.

Discover more about the distinguished thought leaders speaking as part of this series at http://arts.unimelb.edu.au/research/digital-studio/digital-humanities-marathon/digital-humanities-marathon-speakers.

The series will be held in The Lab, Level 2 of the Digital Studio West Wing of Arts West, UMelb.

Online Farm Trials, which is led by a team at the Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation at Federation University Australia, with funding support from the Grains Research and Development Corporation, is being expanded during 2018.  This will include enhanced search results, a more streamlined online interface, and a seasonally relevant extension of trials information.  OFT uses the latest technology to improve access to farm trial research in the Australian grains industry.  The principal objective of OFT is to improve the profitability and sustainability of farming enterprises through access to trial research information.

For further information see: www.farmtrials.com.au, or contact: oft@farmtrials.com.au

The Open Data Institute Australian Network has attracted Scott Waters as its new CEO.  Scott was previously General Manager of Regional Development and Aviation at the Rockhampton Regional Council, and prior to that, CEO of the Whitsunday Regional Council.  ODI Australian Network, and collaborator QCIF, welcome Scott and bid farewell and thank outgoing, founding ODI Australian Network CEO Maree Adshead, who has been a driving force in the growing relationship between the open data and research data communities. Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/news/406-qcif-welcomes-odi-australian-network-s-new-ceo.

Australian research into human diseases will step to the next level now that a powerful supercomputer has become fully operational at The University of Queensland.

The supercomputer, named Wiener, is the first of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region to feature hardware designed specifically to accelerate extremely high-resolution image processing from microscopy facilities.

Wiener will support UQ’s new world-class Lattice Light Sheet Microscope.

UQ’s Queensland Brain Institute assembled Wiener and the supercomputer is under the management of UQ’s Research Computing Centre.  Read more: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2017/12/new-uq-supercomputer-aid-big-research-discoveries.

University of Southern Queensland staff and HDR students can choose from a number of workshops and talks in this year’s eResearch Services Training and Support series.

Events include HPC training, Software Carpentry workshops, introductory sessions to USQ’s eResearch services and tools, Tech Talks, and Hacky Days.

QCIF’s USQ-based eResearch Analyst, Dr Francis Gacenga, will lead most of the events.  Read more: https://www.qcif.edu.au/index.php/events/405-usq-eresearch-training-for-2018.

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 Research Outputs Data Advisor, a Regional Research Coordinator, a Research Partnerships Manager, a Research Content and Repositories Librarian, a Geoscience Data Analyst, and a Machine Learning Data Engineer.