Southeastern Universities Research Association

2004 Assessment of Progress Against the SURA IT Strategic Goals

Presented to the SURA Board and IT CommitteeNovember 4, 2004H. David Lambert

SURA IT Committee Chair

New SURA IT Strategy – Highest Priorities

• Foundation-Building– Connectivity

• Regional (USA Waves, Crossroads)• National (National Lambda Rail, Internet2)• International Opportunities

– High Performance Computing– “Grids”

• Data storage• Middleware

• Program Development– SCOOP– Bio-Informatics/ Medical Research

New SURA IT Strategy – Secondary Priorities

• Nuclear Physics– Still need a vehicle for more collaboration

• what does JL/DOE need from the CIOs

• Homeland Defense and Bio-Terrorism– Awaiting clarity on funding opportunities

• Information Assurance and Security• Minority Serving Institutional

Advancement

New SURA IT Strategy – Lower Priority

• Video-Conferencing– Let ViDe stand on its own– Focus video conferencing expertise developed

on supporting high priorities

• Middleware– Do not pursue extension of Middleware grant– Focus middleware efforts on grid and

authentication services to support high priorities

SURA IT ProgramEvaluation Criteria and Process

• IT Program will be be managed against the goals identified in the IT strategic plan– Plan updated annually.– Replaced every three years.

• Annual Report on progress against the plan will be provided to the executive committee at the annual Fall meeting by the IT Steering committee

• SURA IT Fund status will be reported at each executive committee and full board meeting.

Regional and National Connectivity Goals

• Secure new resources/tools to facilitate infrastructure improvements

• Build the Regional Infrastructure: SURA Crossroads

• Establish National and International Connectivity and Visibility

• Impact digital divide issues

Regional and National Connectivity

• Completed USAWaves Agreement• Built Partnership with Lambda Rail

– Expanded NLR’s reach in the region

• Catalyzed new involvement– LONI, LEARN,ONENet, LOTA

• Aligned goals with SGA Crossroads– Presentations to Governors– SGA Resolution

• New New State Investment– Louisiana $40m, Texas $7.5m, Arkansas $10m

Originally Planned NLR National FootprintOriginally Planned NLR National Footprint

New National New National LambdaRail LambdaRail ArchitectureArchitecture

Regional and National Connectivity

• Leveraged SURA investments for the Region– Total SURA Region Commitments to new

Lambda Infrastructure: $95M - $100M– SURA’s Investment Commitments: $3.4M

• Enabled Atlantic Wave collaboration– Enhancing University and JLab connectivity to

Europe

• Facilitated ‘Tidewater’ coalition in support of JLab recompete

Atlantic Wave

Program GoalsHigh Performance Computing

• Create greater levels of collaboration among high performance computing programs in the SURA Region.

• Increase Federal Funding for high performance computing programs in SURA.

• Establish a compelling ‘application’ vision for the next decade of high performance computing.

• Seek extra-regional and international partnerships that provide advantage to SURA universities’ high performance computing goals.

Program Goal:Middleware/Grids

Establish a comprehensive program to develop a SURA regional Grid and to aid SURA institutions in establishing inter-institutional and intra-institutional grids and the campus deployment of middleware.

“The confluence of High Performance Computing, Grid Computing and Middleware has caused a fundamental realignment in relationships within technology communities nationally and within the SURA region.”

HPC, Grid, Middleware

• Critical March meeting in DC attracted the broad community– A decision to collaborate was made

• SURA HPC/Grids Initiatives Planning Group was created– Participants represent critical mass of

computational scientists, grid project directors, and computer scientists

HPC/Grids Initiative Planning Group

• Ed Seidel, Louisiana State University, Director, Center for Computation and Technology (chair)

• Jed Diem, Tulane, Mathematics professor and past chair of the SURA IT Steering Group (co-chair)

• Paul Avery,  University of Florida - Professor Physics and Director of GriPhyN and iVDGL projects                                     

• Amy W. Apon, University of Arkansas, Associate Professor Computer Science & Computer Engineering

• John (Jay) R. Boisseau, University of Texas at Austin - Director, Texas Advanced Computing Center

• Kelvin K. Droegemeier, University of Oklahoma  - Director, Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms

HPC Group (cont’d)

• Sara J. Graves, University of Alabama in Huntsville - University Professor of Computer Science

• Peter Highnam, National Institutes of Health, Special Assistant to the Director National Center for Research Resources

• Stephen P. Moore, Georgetown University - Director, Advanced Research Computing and Grid Innovation Center

• Richard Newman, Florida Institute of Technology, Associate Vice President IT and Professor Computer Sciences

• Daniel A. Reed, University of North Carolina - Chancellor's Eminent Professor and Director, Institute for Renaissance Computing

• John R. Rose, University of South Carolina - Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering 

• Art Vandenberg, Georgia State University - Director, Advanced Campus Services

HPC Group Priorities

• Awareness– Grid resource clearing house

• Funding– Fostering grid enabled proposals

• Infrastructure– SURA-wide computational grid

• Applications– SCOOP and Bio-Grid– Others?

SCOOP IT Program Goals

• Establish day-to-day collaborations between SURA IT community and the SCOOP program

• Assure that the SCOOP program has a solid technology foundation.

• Assure that SCOOP (Coastal ocean research) assumes parity with other research applications (high energy physics, informatics, computational chemistry, etc) in impacting the priorities of the NSF cyber-infrastructure program.

• Assure that SCOOP research efforts are characterized by leading edge computational and information science activity.

• Engage IT Industry partners in supporting SCOOP infrastructure and applications.

SCOOP Activities

• IT Fellow (Riley) and IT Director (Crane) are participating actively in SCOOP planning.

• Have worked to establish communications with IT leaders in the ‘LOOKING’ Project– "Laboratory for an Ocean Observatory Knowledge

INtegration Grid

• Joint meeting between IT and SCOOP committees this afternoon to explore how to strengthen the collaboration and explore opportunities to engage CIOs and GRID leaders more actively.

Bio-Informatics/Bio-Grid Program Goals

• Establish increased collaboration of regional Bioinformatics resources with view toward establishing a regional BioGrid

• Increase Federal Funding for bioinformatics in the region through the development and support of intrastate and regional Biomedical Research Infrastructure Networks (BIRNs)

• Seek extra-regional and international partnerships that enhance SURA region activities and advance research competitiveness of biomedical research at member institutions.

• Leverage NIH’s Division of Research Infrastructure (in the National Center for Reseach Resources) Programs for the benefit of member Universities and the region.

Bio-Informatics/Bio-Grid Activities

• INBRE Workshop sponsored by the Development Committee – defer to the Development Committee update

• Focus HPC/GRID group on Bio-Grids• Explore partnership with Southern

Governors’ healthcare and tele-medicine initiatives– Jay Sanders invited to address SURA Board

and discuss collaborations with the IT Committee.

Update on SURA IT Fund

$964,270

$481,472$182,928

$641,727

$729,603

Crossroads Initiative

Atlantic Wave

ViDe & Security

Regional GigaPop Support

Uncommitted