eResearch Newsletter April 2023

Dear <<First Name>>, here is the National eResearch Newsletter.

National eResearch Newsletter - April 2023

Message from AeRO:

It seems no-one noticed my “deliberate” error in announcing in the last Newsletter that the eResearch-Australasia Conference (the 17^th annual event) will run from Monday, 16-Oct to Friday, 24-Oct (it should have said 20-Oct). But I trust you have, nevertheless, put those dates in your diaries.

The Conference Co-Chairs will again be Dr Frankie Stevens, and Prof David Abramson. The Conference Program Committee will be established shortly, and will again comprise key players in the eResearch space in Australia and New Zealand. Then a call for submissions will be issued, for Oral presentations, Workshops, Birds-of-a-Feather sessions, Lightning Talks and Posters.

Further information as it is firmed up will be circulated to those on the Conference mailing list, and posted to the Conference website at https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/. Send email to mail@conferencedesign.com.au to be added to the Conference mailing list.

Alex Reid, Newsletter Editor.

CONTENTS:
* Award for Open Source Software for Data Analytics: Closes 22-Apr.
* NCI-NVIDIA Open Hackathon 2023: Deadline 26-Apr.
* Tech Talk 20: How LAMMPS Gets Academics Coding in C++: 26-Apr.
* Review of Tech Talks Under Way: Survey Closes 27-Apr.
* Australian Access Federation Coffee Break Series: starts 3-May.
* Biosecurity Commons Launches on 10 May.
* Pint of Science Festival: 22 to 24-May.
* ALCS 2023 Plenary Speakers Announced: 14-Jun.
* Galaxy Community Conference GCC2023 coming to Australia: 10-Jul.
* Join us at the Integrated Earth 2023 Symposium: Sep-23.
* ARDC Nectar Research Cloud Learning Resources.
* World-Leading Computing Hardware Boosts Australian Research.
* The Transformative Power of HPC Skills and Education.
* Improving Water Security for Farms and Lakes.
* Resources for All Researchers.
* Helping Researchers Search and Manipulate Transcripts.
* HASS and Indigenous Researchers' Resource Hub.
* Research Data Alliance’s 20th Plenary Highlights.

Award for New Developers of Open Source Software for Data Analytics: Closes 22-Apr

A reminder that entries close on 22-Apr for the 2023 Statistical Society of Australia (SSA) Bill Venables Award for new developers of open source software for data analytics, sponsored by the ARDC.

The goal of this award is to encourage new open source software development from the Australian community with a view to supporting efforts to develop and share data science and statistics methodology.

There is prize money of $4,000 for first prize, with a runner-up prize of $1,000.

For more information and to submit, visit: https://statsocaus.github.io/venables-award/.

NCI-NVIDIA Open Hackathon 2023: Deadline 26-Apr

Whether your code is a traditional HPC-centric application or it focuses on AI/ML technologies, the goal of the event is to port and optimize codes on GPUs in a focused and highly collaborative environment. We are expecting 10-12 research teams across various scientific research domains to participate.

The Hackathon will be hosted in hybrid format. Each team will be given dedicated GPU resource and experts from NCI and NVIDIA to help with the code optimisation.

Application Deadline: April 26, 2023

Apply here: https://bit.ly/NCI-NVIDIAopen-hackathon.

Tech Talk 20: How LAMMPS Gets Academics Coding in C++: 26-Apr

The molecular dynamics software package LAMMPS is a widely used, open source package. It has large chunks of code contributed by academics-turned-coders, like the speaker! In this talk we’ll explore how LAMMPS's object-oriented framework helps academics to start writing or modifying code with relatively little C++ knowledge (“From Zero to Dev!”).

He will also share his journey to becoming a research software engineer (RSE), and the challenges and opportunities ahead for RSEs.

When: 26 April 2023, 2.00pm AEDT
Where: Online
Who: Dr Shern Tee, Australian Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland

More information and register: https://eresear.ch/techtalk.

Review of Tech Talks Under Way: Survey Closes 27-Apr

ARDC is in the process of a bi-annual review of the Tech Talks community. The purpose of the review is to understand the community's driving factors and improve the way we run the community. We are interested in your feedback.

We ask that you complete a short survey consisting of 10 short questions.

The survey typically takes less than 5 minutes to complete.
The survey will be open until 27th of April 2023.
The survey is anonymous and all responses are confidential.

Survey Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdeNg_8EjvDHq3OjZPXINtYNSeibvdOPeYCW4tdBt_s4Q0-Zg/viewform?usp=pp_url.

Your assistance in providing feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Australian Access Federation Coffee Break Series: starts 3-May

The AAF Coffee Break Series is designed to be short enough to watch while you enjoy a hot drink and take a quick break from work. Each session focuses on different functions and departments in AAF, chatting with different staff members with the occasional special guest.

We are excited to announce the latest instalment of our series. Join Melroy Almeida (AAF) and Brian Minihan (ORCID) as they discuss:

ORCID Consortium updates & plans for 2023
Reusing an existing ORCID API credential and the benefits
As well as time for Q&A.

Live from Brisbane: Wednesday 3 May, 10AM AEST.
Link: https://aaf.edu.au/project/aaf-coffee-break-series-2023/.

Biosecurity Commons Launches on 10 May

Biosecurity Commons will officially launch at the Annual Diagnostics and Surveillance Workshop 2023 in Canberra on 10 May.

The team behind the ground-breaking new platform that will empower decision-makers and researchers with cutting-edge biosecurity modelling tools will host a presentation at the Workshop and launch the platform.

Dr Rob Clemens, Biosecurity Commons Project Manager, said: “It’s been an exciting two year journey and we are thrilled to make the platform live.”

Biosecurity Commons is a joint initiative of the Australian and Queensland Governments, the NCRIS-funded Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), and four other organisations.

Find out more on the Biosecurity Commons website: https://www.biosecuritycommons.org.au/biosecurity-commons-launch-date-announced/.

Pint of Science Festival: 22 to 24-May

Pint of Science Australia delivers science engagement through a national festival that builds the Australian public’s appreciation of science, contributes positively to combat inequity and negative stereotypes within the Australian science sector, establishes and supports cross-discipline collaborations, and celebrates and champions excellence in the Australian science and science engagement sectors.

The festival takes place this year from 22 - 24 of May 2023. See https://pintofscience.com.au/.

If you have an eResearch science story to share or would like to help other people share their research, then get involved as either volunteers or speakers. If you have any questions, get in touch at https://pintofscience.com.au/contact/.

ALCS 2023 Plenary Speakers Announced: 14-Jun

We are looking forward to some fascinating plenary talks from international computational science leaders in the fields of HPC, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Australasian Leadership Computing Symposium in Canberra on 14-16 June.

This will be a unique opportunity to hear from leading scientists including Prof Lisa Kewley, Director of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian, and Prof Rick Stevens, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences at the Argonne National Laboratory.

Find the details here: https://bit.ly/ALCS23.

Galaxy Community Conference GCC2023 coming to Australia: 10-Jul

For the first time ever the Galaxy Community Conference is coming to Australia, from 10 - 16 July 2023 in Brisbane. See https://galaxyproject.org/events/gcc2023/ for more details.

Galaxy Australia (https://usegalaxy.org.au/) is one of the three global pillars of an active and energetic community of software developers, bioinformaticians and life scientists that work hard to deliver Galaxy to all researchers worldwide.

If you are a data scientist, software engineer, or an educator working in data intensive science you should consider attending GCC2023, even if you are not (yet) using Galaxy.

EarlyBird registration closes 12 May.

Join us at the Integrated Earth 2023 Symposium: Sep-23

The ARDC, TERN, NCI, AuScope, ACCESS-NRI and IMOS are partnering to hold the Australian Academy of Science Elizabeth and Frederick White Research Conference, Integrated Earth 2023, face-face and hybrid on 12 and 13 September, and free to attend.

This 2-day symposium will bring together researchers, scientists, and STEM professionals working across the 5 Earth systems: geosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, to address complex environmental challenges.

For more information and to register an EoI in attending (which must be done by 5-May), visit: https://www.tern.org.au/integrated-earth.

When: 12-13 September
Where: The Shine Dome, Canberra/Ngunnawal Country.

ARDC Nectar Research Cloud Learning Resources

Researchers: Build your practical cloud skills and knowledge with the ARDC Nectar Research Cloud’s live webinars, self-paced online tutorials, and content-rich knowledge base. These free resources cover a wide range of topics from cloud basics, data storage, Jupyter Notebooks, Virtual Desktop service to R Studio and more.

Register for an upcoming (20-Apr) learning webinar: http://bit.ly/nectartraining.
Start self-paced learning: https://support.ehelp.edu.au/support/solutions.

World-Leading Computing Hardware Boosts Australian Research

Australian researchers can now use 1,440 fourth-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors as part of a $40 million upgrade to the Gadi supercomputer at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI). NCI is one of the first supercomputing facilities globally to use the new processors, delivering more than 600 million additional computing hours annually.

The upgrade reinforces the world-class performance of the Gadi supercomputer, which now has over 250,000 processor cores capable of performing over 10 quadrillion calculations per second.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/GadiUpgrade.

The Transformative Power of HPC Skills and Education

NCI has been providing career development for students in the Asia-Pacific through the APAC HPC-AI Competition, which it co-organised with the HPC-AI Advisory Council and the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore in 2022. NCI has focused on delivering tailored capability development programs to enable users to make the most of its supercomputing, AI, and data infrastructure and services.

Assistant Professor Worawan Diaz Carballo from Thammasat University in Thailand highlighted the life changing experiences of her students with high-paying jobs due to the training opportunities provided by the NCI and NSCC.

Read the full story here: https://bit.ly/SCAsia2023highlight_Thailand.

Improving Water Security for Farms and Lakes

Researchers from Federation University's Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI) are working to improve farm water security and farm resilience in Victoria's Lake Corangamite region.

A high-resolution terrain model has been created using LiDAR (laser imaging, detection, and ranging data) for the region. From this model, vital information such as drainage lines, watershed areas and surface water flow directions can be derived.

For more information: https://federation.edu.au/news/articles/improving-water-security-for-farms-and-lakes.

Resources for All Researchers

Accelerate your research with ARDC’s curated resources for researchers. We have all your digital research needs covered – datasets, tools, skills and more. You can find trusted datasets and collections for your digital research, access digital research tools and services to accelerate your research, and upskill in digital research with our best-practice guides and skill-building materials.

See details at: https://ardc.edu.au/researcher/.

Helping Researchers Search and Manipulate Transcripts

University of Queensland (UQ) researcher, Evelyn Ansell, participated in a Higher Degree by Research Candidate Placement with AARNet, where she developed a working prototype Jefferson Transcript Search Tool for Jupyter Notebooks. This project uses programming to explore how to easily search and manipulate transcripts without the need to clean them first.

Evelyn recently ran a workshop with the Australian Text Analytics Platform (ATAP) at UQ for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analytic researchers, discussing how the team developed the tool, demonstrated how it works, and highlighted the possible applications that could assist them with their research.

Read more: https://www.aarnet.edu.au/helping-researchers-search-and-manipulate-transcripts.

HASS and Indigenous Researchers’ Resource Hub

Humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS) and Indigenous researchers in Australia are working to understand and preserve our culture, society and heritage. In doing so, they are also guiding and informing government and community service decisions, driving innovation, and creating new industries and regulatory frameworks.

Key to this mission is access to high-quality and trusted data, digital research infrastructure that enables sharing and reuse of the data, and tools that help with the creation, analysis and retention of the data.

Get your free researcher’s guide at: https://ardc.edu.au/researcher/accelerate-your-hass-and-indigenous-research/.

Research Data Alliance’s 20th Plenary Highlights

The most recent twice-annual plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance conference was held in Gothenburg, Sweden and online 21-23 March 2023; this brought together researchers, data scientists, policymakers, and data stewards from all over the world to share new ideas and explore best practices in using data.

At these meetings, members get together through Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetings, hold Working and Interest Group and Community of Practice (CoP) meetings, and conduct RDA business. They are important milestones in the life of the Work of the RDA, especially in terms of achievements and outputs.

For all the highlights, see: https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-20th-plenary-highlights.

Contributions

This newsletter is based on contributions from members of the eResearch community, and draws on news articles and newsletters published across the sector. The Newsletter is published around the 16th of each month. Please send all contributions (max. 100 words + link + image) or pointers to any other relevant articles or newsletters to editor@aero.edu.au.
Newsletter archives are available at http://aero.edu.au/newsletters/.
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Thanks, Alex Reid, AeRO Newsletter Editor.

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