August 2020 National eResearch Newsletter

On Tuesday 18 August, 9am (AWST), join Mark Stickells, Pawsey Executive Director, as he conducts a virtual tour of the Centre.

Every two years, we open our facility to the public to showcase the amazing science and supercomputing capability we offer.  This year is a little different, due to restrictions, but we still wanted to welcome you to our space.

Please invite your friends and family for this all-ages event on Tuesday 18 August, and celebrate National Science Week with us (https://www.scienceweek.net.au/).

The live stream will take place on our Facebook page – www.facebook.com/pawseycentre or register:  https://pawsey.org.au/event/virtual-tour-national-science-week/.

The eResearch Australasia 2020 conference will be delivered in an exciting online format!

eResearch Online will offer delegates the opportunity to engage, connect, and share their ideas and exemplars concerning new eResearch capabilities, and how information and communication technologies help researchers to collaborate, collect, manage, share, process, analyse, store, find, understand and re-use data and information.

Registrations are now open – save $100 with earlybird registration via https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2020-registration/.

The call for submissions is open for Oral Presentations, BoFs, Poster & Lightning Talks, and Solutions Showcases via https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2020-abstract-submission/.

Please share this information with your colleagues and broader network.

See:  https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/.

Sydney Informatics Hub (SIH) and Melbourne Data Analytics Platform (MDAP) invite you to our second co-hosted online community event on “Defining the Third Space”:  the workforce of data-intensive research enablers (and their landscape), working between traditional academic and professional roles.

Speakers will include Celia Whitchurch (Institute of Education, University College London) and William Locke (Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne) and the ARDC.  It will also feature breakout sessions on defining the community, engaging researchers, and developing the workforce.

Thursday 20th August 2020, 3:30-5:00pm

Further information and registration here:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/defining-the-third-space-tickets-115009169522.

This bimonthly community of practice shares updates and current activities among people involved in managing data management plans in their organisations.

1pm AEST, Thursday, 20 Aug.

Email ARDC at liz.stokes@ardc.edu.au for a calendar invite and find details of past meetings here:  https://sites.google.com/ardc.edu.au/dmp-ig/home.

Are you looking for reusable FAIR data training resources?  Sign up for this info session on a collaborative global sprint Aug 27-28 to work on the Library Carpentry FAIR data lesson.

4pm AEST, Thursday, 20 Aug.

Sign up here:  https://pad.carpentries.org/cchome-sprint-lc-FAIR.

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre invites you to join us for Pawsey Hour (Ask. Me. Anything.), our new way of reaching out to the research community.

Pawsey Hour AMA is an opportunity to join in a discussion with Pawsey expert staff and an online community of peers:

• New researchers who want to know if Pawsey services are for them; and
• Current users who have specific questions about our infrastructure and expertise, or their research challenges (within the Pawsey context).

Register here: https://pawsey.org.au/event/pawsey-hour-ask-me-anything-17/.

Join the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre’s Visualising Data with Paraview (part 1) training on August 24, where you will learn:

Introduction to ParaView (hands on one):

• Launching ParaView on Pawsey Remote Vis
• Loading datasets
• GUI Navigation
• Creating pipelines
• Applying filters

Register here: https://pawsey.org.au/event/visualising-data-with-paraview-part-1/.

On August 28, join the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre to find out what Quantum computing has to offer to Australia’s industry, from applications to the value it can deliver.  Covering from Quantum’s Australia landscape to the roles and opportunities for SME’s, corporations, government, universities and investors, Quantum for Industry growth is an event not to be missed.

If your sector can benefit from Quantum, you could be among the first few that will discover its power at Pawsey.

Register here:  https://pawsey.org.au/event/quantum-for-industry-growth/.

RSE-AUNZ is planning to run regular online events on topics of interest to the RSE community.

We would like to know which topics you would be interested in learning more about.  So, we’ve created a poll for you to add and describe your topic ideas, add feedback on other people’s ideas, and vote for your favourites.  Every month we will select the top voted topic and organize an online event.  The next deadline is set for 31st August.

See the following page for more information:

https://rse-aunz.github.io/topics/online/2020/2020/07/31/RSE-AUNZ-Online-Events.html.

Human collaboration is fundamental to sustaining and progressing essential economic, scientific and cultural activity.  The precipitous governmental and social response to COVID19 enforces physical distancing, and effective climate action relies on making significant shifts towards sustainable commuting.

For science, this amplifies and emphasises existing problems in running remote-inclusive, semi-distributed meetings and conferences.

This CSIRO-hosted Future of Meetings Symposium will address these concerns in a holistic, cross-disciplinary way by considering them alongside key related themes of technology, sustainability, accessibility and inclusivity, among others.

When:  September 15 – 17, 2020 (AEST)

Online Platform:  Whova

Event details:  https://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/futureofmeetings/index.html.

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is pleased to announce that the call for submissions to participate in the upcoming Australian eResearch & Data Skills Summit is now open.

See https://ardc.edu.au/events/rdcs-australian-eresearch-and-data-skills-summit-2020/.

The RDA/FORCE11/ReSA FAIR for Research Software Working group (FAIR4RS WG) has updated the community about their work progress during the last two months.  We welcome other members of the eResearch community to join this effort and participate in the group activities (eg monthly meetings).

See https://www.rd-alliance.org/group/working-and-interest-group-chairs-software-source-code-ig-rdaforce11-software-source-code/post.

TERN, Australia’s Land Ecosystem Observatory, is delighted to be working alongside other research infrastructure co-investors in the Australian Scalable Drone Cloud, a national ecosystem for drone data management.  It is one of 10 three-year projects supported by the Australian Research Data Commons Platforms program.

See https://www.tern.org.au/dronecloud/.

To help students access and learn more about the data collected by Australia’s Land Ecosystem Observatory, TERN has released a selection of its data for use by senior high school students.

See https://www.tern.org.au/tern-ecosystem-data-for-online-teaching/.

ARDC issue open calls from time to time for participation in its programs.  Upcoming calls include the following (all at RFP stage):

• Public Sector to Research Sector Bridges;
• Australian Data Partnerships;
• Platforms 2020.

See full list of past, current and upcoming calls at https://ardc.edu.au/open-calls/.

Need soil moisture data? Try a cosmic ray soil moisture sensor.

The new CosmOz website from CSIRO and TERN, Australia’s Land Ecosystem Observatory, lets users visualise then download open-source soil moisture and rainfall data from a growing number of sensors.

See https://www.tern.org.au/cosmoz/.

The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) is pleased to announce that the final stage of funding for a project to help refresh the ARDC’s Nectar Research Cloud has been approved.

Intersect will partner with QCIF to provide the new infrastructure, which is expected to support approximately 10,000 virtual CPUs for the research cloud, along with increased volume and object storage.

The Nectar Research Cloud provides computing infrastructure and supporting core services to more than 17,900 researchers, enabling Australia’s research community to store, access, and analyse data remotely, rapidly and autonomously.

See https://ardc.edu.au/news/final-funding-announced-for-nectar-research-cloud-refresh/.

TERN, Australia’s Land Ecosystem Observatory, is using creative desktop methods for plot-based monitoring of Australia’s ecosystems – the next best thing to fieldwork in a time when fieldwork is not the best thing.

See https://www.tern.org.au/news-collect-earth/.

The Australian Research Data Commons’ (ARDC’s) popular online research data training course, 23 (research data) things, has been updated and is now on GitHub.

See https://ardc.edu.au/news/enhance-your-research-data-management-skills-through-an-innovative-online-course/.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre for Extreme scale Readiness (PACER) program is coming soon to advance Australian computational researchers and prepare them for the next era of supercomputing.

PACER will prepare researcher’s code optimisation, application and workflow readiness by running a Grand Challenge Problem;  for projects running on a previously unavailable scale on the next-generation supercomputer.

To solve these problems, Pawsey will co-fund Australian postdoctoral or PhD positions, embedded within a subset of successful PACER projects who will work to solve computational problems.

Read the full announcement here: https://pawsey.org.au/pacer-preannouncement/.

The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are pleased to showcase a range of recently uploaded training series on their YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/pawseysupercomputingcentre).  These series come in a variety of playlists including Using Containers with OpenFOAM, Webinar Series on Containers, and Using Containers in Bioinformatics.  These playlists also include a Pawsey Webinar Series which covers topics such as using cloud, supercomputing and visualisation at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

See all of Pawsey’s videos and playlists here: https://www.youtube.com/c/PawseySupercomputingCentre/playlists.

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre is pleased to announce that the Pawsey Summer internship:  Call for students and projects are now open!

Interns will be partnered with competitively awarded projects.  They will work alongside national and/or international supervisors and collaborators.  They will also learn from Pawsey Supercomputing Centre staff about good practices of using Pawsey resources, good practices for poster creation/presentation, techniques for business communication, and more.

Through training, interns will learn more about supercomputing, data management and scientific visualization.  They’ll network with other interns and set up a Community of Practice.

Submit a project:  https://pawsey.org.au/pawsey-summer-internship-program-the-call-for-projects-is-now-open/.

Apply for an internship:  https://pawsey.org.au/pawsey-supercomputing-centre-summer-internships-call-for-students-is-now-open/.

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 are some current vacancies:  Data Curation Analyst (UQ), Cloud Technologies Skills Specialist (ARDC).