January 2018 National eResearch Newsletter

The University of Western Australia, Murdoch University, Curtin University, and Edith Cowan University in conjunction with Advancing Western Australian Education, the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, and the Forrest Research Foundation are proud to present the 2018 Research Bazaar. The aim of the event is to equip researchers from all career stages and disciplines with the digital skills and tools required to do their research better, faster and smarter.
UWA is hosting the 2018 Research Bazaar to be held from 23rd- 25th January at the Business School. Registrations are now open, and more information is available at https://resbaz.github.io/resbaz2018/perth/.

The preliminary program for Australasian Computer Science Week (ACSW 2018) is now available at: http://acsw.org.au.

The University of Queensland’s Research Computing Centre will host ACSW 2018 on UQ’s St Lucia, Brisbane campus from 30 January to 2 February.

More information at https://cc.uq.edu.au/event/1667/rcc-host-australasian-computer-science-week-2018.

The University of Queensland’s Research Computing Centre will host its second “Third Spacer Lunch” on Wednesday, 7 February.

Third Spacers are those with university academic and professional hybrid roles.

All those who identify as Third Spacers are welcome to attend the lunch at St Lucy’s Café, 12pm, on UQ’s St Lucia campus. More information at https://rcc.uq.edu.au/event/1757/third-spacer-lunch.

Sky Mining hackathon (Hackastron) is happening in Perth on 16-18 February 2018!

This event is a unique opportunity to explore astronomy data and solve problems directly from astronomers across Australia. Teams will also have the opportunity to win a grand prize of $2,000 provided they successfully come up with the best solution to one of the challenges.

This event is free and food and refreshments will be provided throughout the weekend.

To be a part of this exciting event, please register at: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/hackastron-sky-mining-2018-tickets-37934847149

For more information and to see the challenges, see: https://adacs.org.au/index.php/sky-mining-hackathon/.

The Australian Government Linked Data Working Group (WG), a community of practice focussed on Linked Data and Semantic Web issues, is interested in creating an integrated set of ontologies allowing disparately published government data to be interoperable. The proposed project, called Australian Government Integrated Set of Ontologies (AGISO), will be relevant to users of government data also.

The WG asks any eResearchers interested in data/metadata semantics and government data to make their interests known to the WG so they can potentially be catered for.

See http://linked.data.gov.au.

The Board of Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), based at The Australian National University (ANU), welcomes the Australian Government’s announcement that it will invest $70 million to replace Australia’s highest performance research supercomputer, Raijin, which is rapidly nearing the end of its service life.

See https://nci.org.au/2017/12/18/nci-welcomes-70m-investment-hpc-capability/.

Mr James Goldie from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is researching the connections between heatwaves and hospital admissions using the NCI supercomputer. This research is looking ahead at a future where extreme heat is more common and more deadly, and trying to find ways for us to be better prepared to deal with the effects of heatwaves.

See https://nci.org.au/research/preparing-hospitals-dangerously-hot-days/.

As New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) prepares to launch new supercomputing resources this year, it closed 2017 by celebrating some major milestones in the refresh of its platforms. Working with Cray and its subcontractors, the NeSI/NIWA team installed and configured Kupe to welcome the first wave of users migrating off the outgoing systems. Kupe will provide supercomputer services over the next few months while space is renovated and upgraded for NeSI’s new systems, Mahuika and Maui.

To read the full project update, visit https://www.nesi.org.nz/news/2017/12/nesi-platforms-update-welcome-kupe-farewell-fitzroy.

2017 was a significant year of growth for eRSA. Our team was kept busy with plenty of projects, including National Pathways forums, a successful Cultures & Communities Project, the launch of our new integrated HPC and Cloud platform (TANGO), plus plenty more!

We’ve put together an infographic summarising the highlights and achievements of 2017 which can be viewed here: https://www.ersa.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/2017-Year-in-Review-V1.png.

The team at eRSA is looking forward to contributing to the wider eResearch community again in 2018 and beyond.