eResearch Newsletter July 2021

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

National eResearch Newsletter - July 2021

Message from AeRO: AeRO Forum 2021.

You may have noticed that the date originally advertised for the AeRO forum has come and gone… While we had hoped this would be our first opportunity for a face-to-face meeting in 18 months, the ongoing COVID situation has, unfortunately laid these plans to rest.

Not to be deterred, AeRO are hoping to run a bigger and better event, to be held closer to the date of the eResearch Conference. The new event is intended to provide an opportunity for the eResearch community to contribute to the discussion on the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap.

More details will be provided as planning progresses.

Phil Gurney, AeRO CEO.

CONTENTS:
* NCI Presents MathWorks Workshop Series 2021: 19 to 21-Jul.
* DRYAD's Australian Data Publishing Community: 20-Jul.
* Authoring Support: A National Approach to Research Software: 21-Jul.
* Research Software Support: A National Approach: 22-Jul.
* ML/AI, Accelerators at Scale and Next Generation of HPC: 22-Jul.
* Research Software Agenda Consultation with RSE-AUNZ Members: 23-Jul.
* CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School Open till 27-Jul.
* eResearch Australasia 2021 Conference - Submissions: close 30-Jul.
* Getting Started with Excel Free Webinar: 4-Aug.
* AARNet Researcher Talks Winter Series: 5-Aug.
* RDA Virtual Plenary 18 – Call for Sessions Open till 6-Aug.
* NZ Research Software Engineering Conference Open till 6-Aug.
* When Bioinformatics Outgrows Compute: Webinars: 19 & 20-Aug.
* HPC and Data in Materials Course: starts 1-Sep.
* SeptembRSE Worldwide: 6-Sep.
* Nature’s Choice for Ecology Data Deposition.
* AeRO Cloud Grants Program.
* Helping to Protect Australians from the Dangers of Bushfires.
* National Research Infrastructure Roadmap 2021 Under Way.
* TERN Satellite Radar Images.
* GLAM Workbench Updates.
* CAUDIT Appoints New CEO.
* Bookings Open for the AARNet 2021 Train-The-Trainer Workshops.
* CeRDI Online Farm Trials Podcast.
* State of the Craft in RDM: A View from NZ.
* NCI Research: Major Step Forward for Quantum Error Algorithms.
* Building Communities in HPC.
* Pawsey Capital Refresh - Update.
* Launching a Draft Research Software Agenda for Australia.
* AI Learning Helps Save Sight.
* NeSI $2.1 Million Collaborative HPCF Investment.
* Testing the A100 Tensor Cores on Deep Learning Code.
* 9 nodes Announced for the National Health Studies Data Infrastructure.
* $5 Million to Tackle Australia’s Bushfire Data Challenges.

NCI Presents MathWorks Workshop Series 2021: 19 to 21-Jul

NCI and MathWorks are offering three hands-on online workshops with a focus on MATLAB, AI and parallel computing. Limited spaces are available, so please reserve your placement by registering.

Find out more about the workshops here: https://opus.nci.org.au/display/Help/NCI+Presents%3A+MathWorks+Workshop+Series+2021.

DRYAD's Australian Data Publishing Community: 20-Jul

Dryad is an open data platform for publishing and preservation; meet panelists from Australian member institutions and Dryad leadership.

When: 20 July, 11am (AEST) - Run by: ARDC.

More information and to register: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/dryads-australian-data-publishing-community-tickets-161182237411.

Authoring Support: A National Approach to Research Software: 21-Jul

This consultation session, part of the Research Software Agenda, is specifically for professional research support staff, especially research software engineers, trainers, eResearch analysts and anyone who assists researchers or others who are looking to understand and apply best practice for authoring research software.

When: 21 July, 1pm (AEST) - Run by: ARDC.

More information and to register: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/authoring-support-a-national-approach-to-research-software-tickets-161417298485.

Research Software Support: A National Approach to Research Software: 22-Jul

This consultation session is specifically for professional research support staff, especially library staff, data stewards/managers, trainers, integrity officers and anyone who assists with software publishing, citation and other related concerns.

When: 22 July, 1pm (AEST) - Run by: ARDC.

More information and to register: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/research-software-support-a-national-approach-to-research-software-tickets-161416301503.

ML/AI, Accelerators at Scale and Next Generation of Supercomputers: 22-Jul

The next Pawsey ‘Supercomputing Series’ event will welcome industry representatives and researchers to share insight on projects spanning from astronomy to renewable energy and discussing the impact that Machine Learning (ML), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and accelerators have on their breakthroughs.

July 22 2pm AWST (4pm AEST) - Online.

Panellists include:

Alessandro Rigazzi, AI and Machine Learning researcher engineer at HPE/Cray and part of the team that created Smartsim;
Dr Ivy Wong, CSIRO Astronomy Science Leader in SKA massive data challenges;
Mathieu Cocho, Mechanical Engineer at Carnegie Clean Energy, using neural network to develop its wave predictor.

Research Software Agenda Consultation with RSE-AUNZ Members: 23-Jul

This consultation session is specifically for professional research support staff, especially library staff, data stewards/managers, trainers, integrity officers and anyone who assists with software publishing, citation and other related concerns.

When: 23 July, 1pm (AEST) - Run by: RSE-AUNZ & ARDC.

Join the community and receive an invitation to attend here: https://rse-aunz.github.io/.

Applications for CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School Open till 27-Jul

Applications are open for this year’s CODATA-RDA Research Data Science Summer School for Early Career Researchers.

The School will be run on an online basis from 6 September to 5 November 2021.

Topics to be covered include Open Science and Responsible Conduct of Research; Introduction to Unix Shell; Programming for Analysis; Git; Research Data Management; Author Carpentry; Data Visualisation; Information Security; Machine Learning; Computational Infrastructures.

Applications close on 27 July and participation for selected candidates is free. More information on: https://codata.org/applications-open-codata-rda-research-data-science-summer-school-2021-6-september-5-november-2021-deadline-27-july-2021/.

eResearch Australasia 2021 Conference - Submissions: close 30-Jul

The conference offers the pre-eminent opportunity to engage, connect, and share ideas and exemplars concerning new eResearch capabilities, and how ICT can help researchers to manage the complete data life-cycle.

The Conference will be held October 11-15 online and in person in Brisbane and at nodes in major cities.

Submissions are invited for Oral Presentations, BoFs, Lightning Talks, and Posters, and close on 30 July 2021.

An invitation is also extended to anyone who would like to assist with the process of reviewing submissions – contact Conference Design at mail@conferencedesign.com.au.

For more information and to make a submission, go to: https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/2021-abstract-submission/.

Getting Started with Excel Free Webinar: 4-Aug

Intersect has successfully trained over 20,000 HDR Students and researchers since the inception of its training program back in 2012. Intersect will continue to make researcher training available to more people, including offering free and open to all webinars.

Register for Intersect's next 'Getting started with Excel' free webinar on the 4th of August.

For more information and Registration: https://intersect.org.au/training/course/EXCEL001.

Read more about Intersect’s training milestone (reaching 20,000 trainees) here: https://intersect.org.au/news/intersect-reaches-a-training-milestone/.

AARNet Researcher Talks Winter Series: 5-Aug

In this monthly series of Researcher Talks, you'll find out how researchers across different domains are using AARNet infrastructure to accelerate their research. Each session will feature a researcher speaking about their work and the tools and techniques they use for analysis, followed by an informal interactive Q&A session.

In Researcher Talk #3 Thursday 5 August 1pm-2pm (via Zoom) Dr Steffen Bollmann, Research Fellow, The University of Queensland will highlight interoperability examples between AARNet CloudStor and external tools and services like Zotero, the open science foundation (OSF) and high-performance computing clusters.

More information and registrations: https://www.aarnet.edu.au/events/aarnet-researcher-talks-2021-winter-series.

Research Data Alliance (RDA) Virtual Plenary 18 – Call for Sessions Open till 6-Aug

The Research Data Alliance will be holding Virtual Plenary 18 (VP18) from 3-18 November 2021. The event will comprise a combination of Working and Interest Group sessions, joint meetings between multiple RDA groups, and Birds of a Feather sessions.

The Call for Sessions is now open, until 6 August. For more information, please visit https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-virtual-plenary-18-call-sessions-now-open.

NZ Research Software Engineering Conference Submissions Open till 6-Aug

Planning for the NZ Research Software Engineering Conference 2021 (NZRSE 2021), hosted by New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI), is well underway and the Call for Submissions is now open!

Themed Open Research – Workflows, Data and Communities, this year’s conference will focus on how to create effective collaboration through implemented workflows, accessible data and community-building.

Deadline to submit is 06 August 2021.

Read more: https://www.nesi.org.nz/news/2021/07/nz-research-software-engineering-conference-now-accepting-submissions.

When Your Bioinformatics Outgrows Your Compute: Webinars: 19 & 20-Aug

If you need to take your bioinformatics to the next level, these webinars will help you take the next steps towards the compute your research needs. Join Sydney Informatics Hub, University of Sydney and Australian BioCommons for two webinars in August:

'Where to go when your bioinformatics outgrows your compute' will help biologists to understand their bioinformatics workflows' compute requirements and offer tips on how to access various compute resources.
'High performance bioinformatics: submitting your best NCMAS application' will provide insight into what makes a strong application for access to national high performance computing facilities.

HPC and Data in Materials Course: starts 1-Sep

As of 14-July registration is open for the inaugural collaborative graduate course HPC and Data in Materials Design and Discovery.
A 12-week online, collaboratively taught course for Australian graduate students and researchers. The curriculum design aims to support graduate students and ECRs working in the space between HPC/Big Data and computational materials science. Two 1-hr sessions each week encompassing altogether 16 topical lectures and 8 hands-on tutorials.

Course runs from 1st Sep to 26th Nov 2021.

Registration:
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/hpc-and-data-in-materials-design-and-discovery-a-collaborative-course-registration-163159684007.

SeptembRSE Worldwide: 6-Sep

The Society of RSE is inviting everyone to join a dedicated "SeptembRSE Worldwide" session, along with the other events that are scheduled for SeptembRSE. The RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee is planning to send a representative to the "Worldwide" session, but if you are especially keen to represent please reach out to the RSE-AUNZ Steering Committee at steering.committee@rse-aunz.org.

If you have colleagues in countries without an RSE chapter (eg, most of south-east Asia), please put them in touch with worldwide@society-rse.org; the Society of RSE is keen to raise awareness about RSEs and help establish new RSE chapters across the globe.

More information and registration (opening late July): https://septembrse.society-rse.org/.

Nature’s Choice for Ecology Data Deposition

TERN has received the distinction of being listed by Nature as a recommended data repository for scientific data in the discipline of ecology.

More information at: https://www.tern.org.au/news-nature-recommends/.

AeRO Cloud Grants Program

Recognising that Early Career Researchers (ECRs) often need support to build their research profile, AeRO, in partnership with Google Cloud and QCIF, are pleased to announce the inaugural AeRO Cloud Grants Program.

The program offers the opportunity to apply for US$5,000 credit towards Google Cloud services (US$1,000 for PhD students), supported by QCIF training credits that can be redeemed for either a one-day training course or half a day of one-on-one support.

Up to 20 grants are available, with the successful applicants to be announced on 24th August.

Details, including how to register for a Google Cloud Hero orientation workshop designed for applicants, can be found on the AeRO website (soon) at: http://aero.edu.au/grants/.

Helping to Protect Australians from the Dangers of Bushfires

TERN is aggregating and harmonising bushfire fuel data on a national scale to better enable Australia-wide bushfire response and preparedness.

More information at: https://www.tern.org.au/news-bushfire-fuel-data/.

National Research Infrastructure Roadmap 2021 Under Way

The Australian Government, through its Department of Education, Skills and Employment, has commenced its 5-yearly review of the National Research Infrastructure Roadmap. A preliminary survey was conducted in June to which nearly 3,000 people responded. It is expected that the review will be conducted mostly on-line, and is being guided by an Expert Working Group headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski. An Exposure Draft will be released later in the year, on which feedback will be sought.

For more information, or to join the mailing list, go to: https://2021nriroadmap.dese.gov.au/.

TERN Satellite Radar Images

All-weather, day and night, satellite radar images are now available for TERN sites, Australia and beyond.

Australian researchers and industry now have access to more than 1,000 high-resolution satellite-collected radar images covering the Australian continent, with more data added every day.

More information at: https://www.tern.org.au/news-novasar-data/.

GLAM Workbench Updates

The GLAM Workbench provides tools and examples to help researchers work with data from galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. It’s built and shared using Jupyter notebooks, and openly-licensed to encourage reuse. Recent updates have added automated Docker builds, one-click integration with Reclaim Cloud, and new support resources, including a news feed and video channel. In December, the web archives section won the British Library Labs 2020 Research Award.

See: https://glam-workbench.net/.

CAUDIT Appoints New CEO

The CAUDIT Executive is pleased to announce the appointment of Jenny Beresford as Chief Executive Officer, commencing on 26 July.

Jenny is an internationally recognised digital and technology specialist, with a background in management consulting, as a digital business advisor, and as a CIO in industry and the university sector. She was recently Research Director (Strategy and Innovation) with Gartner.

Jenny is a creative technologist who believes strongly in the transformative power of data and digital to enhance our lives and sustain our future on this planet.

See: https://www.caudit.edu.au/news/new-caudit-ceo-appointed.

Bookings Open for the AARNet 2021 Train-The-Trainer Workshops

Our training is focused on improving the sector’s understanding of the capabilities of networks and data movement and how to use the services we provide, such as CloudStor and SWAN. Workshops provide the practical knowledge needed to transfer, store and manage research data (of any size) in complex scenarios throughout the research and data lifecycle.

Go to: https://news.aarnet.edu.au/aarnet-train-the-trainer-workshops/.

CeRDI Online Farm Trials Podcast

Online Farm Trials (OFT) is a long-term, collaborative project involving the Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation at Federation University Australia and the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC). OFT involves the digital transformation of trial research data and information from Australia’s grains industry, offering advanced spatial mapping and filtering systems for accessing current and legacy data.

A podcast provides an overview of OFT and explaining how the platform can benefit users and inform decision making. The podcast features Federation University OFT project lead Dr Nathan Robinson, GRDC emerging technologies officer Dr John Rivers, and Denielle Smith from Northern Growers Alliance.

See: https://grdc.com.au/news-and-media/podcasts/podcast/accessing-trial-data-its-never-been-easier.

State of the Craft in Research Data Management: A View from New Zealand

In order to better understand the current state of research data management Globus reached out to several research computing leaders at institutions around the world to gain insights into their approach and their recommendations for others. One of those leaders was Nick Jones, Director of New Zealand eScience Infrastructure. Globus recently published their conversation with Nick as the final instalment of its five-part series.

Read more: https://www.nesi.org.nz/case-studies/state-craft-research-data-management-view-new-zealand.

NCI Research: Major Step Forward for Quantum Error Algorithms

Quantum computers are poised to become a powerful tool for scientific and industrial computing in coming years. What was for decades a theoretical concept is finally becoming a physical reality. Scaling up quantum computing systems to a practical level of robustness and reliability is a key focus of many research groups in the field.

Researchers from the University of Sydney are using NCI and the Gadi supercomputer to find more efficient and powerful ways of controlling the very building blocks of a quantum computer.

Read more: https://nci.org.au/research/research-highlights/major-step-forward-quantum-error-algorithms.

Building Communities in HPC

Join NERSC, Pawsey and NeSI as they discuss their best practices in building communities in HPC.

How is your Centre building a community in HPC?
Why are you trying to build a community in HPC?
What successes and learnings have you found in community building?

Watch the series here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmu61dgAX-abWxGPjzBaQPE8szDwK4PzA.

Pawsey Capital Refresh - Update

On 24 February 2021, The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre announced the name of the new supercomputer - Setonix, which will be delivered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as part of the biggest upgrade to the Pawsey computing infrastructure since the centre opened in 2009. The new supercomputer will deliver up to 50 petaFLOPs, or 30 times more compute power than its predecessor systems Magnus and Galaxy, to help power the future high-impact Australian research projects.

Find out more: https://pawsey.org.au/about-us/capital-refresh/.

Launching a Draft Research Software Agenda for Australia

The ARDC is calling for research software to be recognised as a first-class scholarly output of research.

Read more here: https://ardc.edu.au/news/launching-a-draft-research-software-agenda-for-australia/.

AI Learning Helps Save Sight

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence program called Dr Grader to allow GPs and primary care providers to detect diabetic retinopathy simply by taking a photo of a patient’s eye using AI.

Read more here: https://pawsey.org.au/case_studies/ai-learning-helps-save-sight/.

NeSI $2.1 Million Collaborative HPCF Investment

A new $2.1 million investment announced by New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) will ensure the country's national research computing platforms remain responsive and high-performing to power data-centric research. The investment, a collaboration by the University of Auckland, University of Otago, and Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research, will double the performance and significantly extend the capabilities of the Mahuika cluster.

Since Mahuika came online in 2018, the number of users and scale of research has grown nearly 50% year upon year. The new equipment will be hosted in Wellington, at the national purpose-designed HPC facility of NIWA, another NeSI Collaborator.

Read more: https://www.nesi.org.nz/news/2021/06/21-million-collaborative-investment-responds-growth-demand-and-scale-national-research.

Tech Insights: Testing the A100 Tensor Cores on Deep Learning Code

New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) is rolling out new infrastructure to underpin data science, specifically Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). We started the Tech Insights blog series to share some of the behind-the-scenes work that’s gone into preparing NeSI’s new A100 Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) cards for machine learning use.

Our second instalment in the series focuses on the tests of deep learning code we did in partnership with users. Testing real code, instead of benchmarks, gave us the opportunity to learn more about the experience we can expect for our users.

Read more: https://www.nesi.org.nz/case-studies/tech-insights-testing-a100-tensor-cores-deep-learning-code.

9 nodes Announced for the National Health Studies Data Infrastructure

The ARDC is pleased to announce the establishment of 9 initial nodes of the Health Studies Australian National Data Asset (HeSANDA) network, a nationally distributed network of health data sharing infrastructure.

Read more here: https://ardc.edu.au/news/9-nodes-announced-for-the-national-health-studies-data-infrastructure/.

$5 Million to Tackle Australia’s Bushfire Data Challenges

The ARDC has announced the 5 projects that will create a Bushfire Data Commons as part of the Bushfire Data Challenges program.

Read more here: https://ardc.edu.au/news/5-million-to-tackle-australias-bushfire-data-challenges/.

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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