November 2018 national eResearch newsletter

Join this webinar on 20-Nov to learn more about the Sprint, how you and your work team can get involved and what you can expect to get out of being part of such an exciting global initiative. The aim of the Sprint is to create brief guides (stand alone, self-paced training materials) that can be used by the research community to understand FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) in different contexts. All resources created will be made available for anyone to adopt, adapt and reuse for their own training purposes.

Tue 20 Nov, 11:00 – 11:30 AEDT.

Register at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/4166297342372945155.

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is currently developing its five year strategy and capital plans, and wishes to engage with a range of resource providers, institutions and research organisations, e-infrastructure providers, peak bodies and government.

These state-wide events are an opportunity to provide input into the ARDC’s long term planning and will guide the development of the ARDC strategy and capital plan exposure drafts, to be circulated around the middle of December 2018.

Information sessions will take place nationally as follows: 22-Nov NSW, 23-Nov ACT, 27-Nov Vic, 28-Nov Tas, 3-Dec Qld, 5-Dec SA, 6-Dec WA.

More information and registration at https://ardc.edu.au/planning/events/ardc-statewide-consultations

Join IBM’s workshop on Spectrum Scale at the University of Queensland on Tuesday, 27 November, 12:30pm-1:30pm AEST.

IBM Technical Leader Andrew Beattie will provide an overview of the future of the Spectrum Scale technology currently being used by UQ to underpin MeDiCI, the university’s data storage fabric. Andrew will discuss how this IBM technology can help researchers better understand their unstructured data and how that data can be safely and securely moved across tiers.

This workshop will be an opportunity to discuss ways the Spectrum Scale technology can be leveraged for future needs in Queensland.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/queensland-ibm-and-whats-next-for-spectrum-scale-tickets-51955076031

Learn more about the Make Data Count (MDC) project and the five steps you can take to make the data in your repository count. Hear from MDC project team members who have already implemented MDC in the dash and DataOne repositories. Learn from their experience, see the results and ask questions.

Tue 27 Nov, 12:00 – 13:00 AEDT.

Register at https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/2902829837806955777.

This forum will have humanities, arts and social science (HASS) researchers and the cultural collecting sector (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) professionals speaking about the links between research, data, tools and national infrastructure.

This event is presented by Tinker, tailored research tools for the HASS community, an NCRIS funded project which is a product of the HASS DEVL.

It is an opportunity for scholars and collecting professionals to find out about contemporary data and technology-intensive research and collection practices.

9:00am – 4:30pm AEDT, Friday, 7 December 2018, at Quadrangle Philosophy Room S249 at The University of Sydney, Camperdown.

For details and registration, see https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sydney-digital-humanities-pathways-forum-2018-your-pathway-to-the-latest-innovative-eresearch-tools-tickets-48824315843?aff=ebdssbeac

Researchers now get 1TB personal storage space on CloudStor.

With researchers sharing and working on increasingly large files, we realise storage needs are also increasing. So, to help researchers store more, AARNet has increased the personal storage space allocated to researchers to 1TB of space – up from 100GB. With all that extra space, you have room to make the most of CloudStor’s integrated features to explore big ideas.

Find out more about CloudStor features in the AARNet Knowledge Base: https://support.aarnet.edu.au/hc/en-us/categories/200217608-CloudStor

In high competition, the University of Queensland’s Research Computing Centre was one of the chosen ones to present a paper in Dallas, Texas, at SC18, the world’s largest and most prestigious supercomputing conference (https://sc18.supercomputing.org/).

“It’s a big deal to get into SC,” said RCC Director Professor David Abramson. “The technical program is very competitive, so to have our paper accepted is quite an achievement.”

RCC PhD student Mark Endrei presented the paper on high-performance computing energy efficiency modelling of parallel applications on Tuesday, 13 November.

The supercomputing conference generally attracts more than 10,000 participants.

Read more at: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2018/10/rcc-present-paper-sc18

Registrations are now open for the 14th International Digital Curation Conference, “Collaborations and Partnerships: addressing the big digital challenges together” to be held 4-7 February 2019 at Arts West Building, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne.

Go to www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc19/registration to book now and benefit from early bird registration rates!

More information at www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc19.

The monthly TechTalks are currently in recess, but expected to resume in February 2019 (ie Friday, 1-Feb-19). Topic and speakers to be advised. See the past events/topics at https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/events/past/

In the meantime, the organisers are looking for suggestions for topics and speakers – see https://www.meetup.com/monthlytechtalk/

A $1.4million project to make Agriculture data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) has begun. It will provide access to reliable, interoperable, enhanced agricultural data collections to enable seamless data input to decision support tools used by farmers and agronomists. This will help inform management and policy decisions, enhancing the translation of research to real world on-farm benefits.

https://ardc.edu.au/news/agriculture-research-data-cloud.

The University of Queensland won a gold Australian Computer Society (ACS) Digital Disruptors Award at a gala event in Melbourne on 1 November.

The university won for its latest high-performance computer, Wiener, a specialist machine for processing large volumes of imaging data.

UQ Research Computing Centre Director Professor David Abramson said he was delighted to be one of the winning entries two years in a row. “We have leveraged several disruptive technologies in Wiener to deliver stunning performance on key problems,” he said.

Read more at: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2018/11/rcc-and-uq-win-gold-acs-digital-disruptors-awards

Rapid precision-scanning technology to speed up medical diagnoses and help address Australia’s shortage of trained pathologists is being developed at the University of Queensland.

The university’s Digital Pathology team is working to replace glass pathology slides with digital slides for faster analysis, distribution and storage.

The researchers are also working on new data management processes and delivery technologies to allow the digitised slides to be stored indefinitely, creating a potential data bank for further research and education.

The team is using UQ’s newest high-performance computer, Wiener, for its work, with the support of the university’s Research Computing Centre.

Read more at: https://rcc.uq.edu.au/article/2018/10/uq-group-develops-tech-speed-pathology-workflows

The 2018 GovHack Red Carpet Awards event was held on Saturday the 10th of November at Australian Technology Park in Sydney. Information about award winners is up on the GovHack website at https://www.govhack.org/2018-winners/.

Dates for the 10th GovHack competition were announced for 2019, 6-8 September, across Australia and New Zealand. If you are interested in getting involved in 2019, please get in touch with info@govhack.org.

Join us in Auckland, NZ on 18-20 February 2019 for ‘People.Powered.Research.’ – an event that will bring together researchers across disciplines and communities who are exploring or innovating the ways digital tools advance research outcomes.

We’re seeking lightning talks, presentations, panels, Birds of a Feather (BoFs), workshops, and posters – submissions from Australia are welcome and encouraged!

Click here for details: http://eresearch2019.org.nz/submissions/

Since its establishment in 2012, biologists wanting access to a platform which ‘takes the
IT out of bioinformatics’ have found the Australian-made Genomics Virtual Laboratory a very useful tool. Built on the global open access platform, the Galaxy Project, its usage in Australia is growing. Since January 2016 we’ve run a publicly available Galaxy server – Galaxy Australia (https://usegalaxy.org.au/) – with usage growing to now include 2,600 users. The service has run almost 300,000 jobs and has grown to ~25,000 jobs per month.

Full details at https://galaxyaustralia.blogspot.com/2018/11/galaxy-australia-usage-doubles-in-2018.html

If you do not license your research outputs (e.g. your data), no-one else can legally use it. This comprehensive Guide provides information relevant to data owners, users and suppliers. It includes flowcharts to guide decision making about data licensing and data reuse.

Find the guide at https://www.ands.org.au/guides/research-data-rights-management

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: an eResearch Project Officer and a Manager, a Solutions Architect, ARDC CEO, a Senior HPC Specialist, a Visualisation Technology Specialist, a Research Repository Specialist, a Research Data Management Lead, a DevOps Engineer, multiple eResearch Analyst positions, multiple roles in Cloud Computing, HPC, Scientific Software Development, and Research-Focused Business Analysts.