Trusted CI Experiences in Cybersecurity and Service to Open Science

This article describes experiences and lessons learned from the Trusted CI project, funded by the US National Science Foundation to serve the community as the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. Trusted CI is an effort to address cybersecurity for the open science community through a single organization that provides leadership, training, consulting, and knowledge to that community. The article describes the experiences and lessons learned of Trusted CI regarding both cybersecurity for open science and managing the process of providing centralized services to a broad and diverse community.Comment: 8 pages, PEARC '19: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 28-August 1, 2019, Chicago, IL, US

A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities

Examines the state of the foundation's efforts to improve educational opportunities worldwide through universal access to and use of high-quality academic content

Sustained Software for Cyberinfrastructure - Analyses of Successful Efforts with a Focus on NSF-Funded Software

Reliable software that provides needed functionality is clearly essential for an effective distributed cyberinfrastructure (CI) that supports comprehensive, balanced, and flexible distributed CI that, in turn, supports science and engineering applications. The purpose of this study was to understand what factors lead to software projects being well sustained over the long run, focusing on software created with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and/or used by researchers funded by the NSF. We surveyed NSF-funded researchers and performed in-depth studies of software projects that have been sustained over many years. Successful projects generally used open-source software licenses and employed good software engineering practices and test practices. However, many projects that have not been well sustained over time also meet these criteria. The features that stood out about successful projects included deeply committed leadership and some sort of user forum or conference at least annually. In some cases, software project leaders have employed multiple financial strategies over the course of a decades-old software project. Such well-sustained software is used in major distributed CI projects that support thousands of users, and this software is critical to the operation of major distributed CI facilities in the US. The findings of our study identify some characteristics of software that is relevant to the NSF-supported research community, and that has been sustained over many years

Maine EPSCoR End-to-End Connectivity for Sustainability Science Collaboration

This NSF EPSCoR C2 project allowed Maine EPSCoR to continue the state’s momentum to enhance the connectivity of the state’s research, higher education, and K-12 institutions through Maine’s Research and Education Network (MaineREN). Over the last few years, multi-million dollar investments have built networking and computing power at the state level, including: 1) the installation of 1,100 miles of middle-mile fiber optic cable; 2) investments in shared computing resources for high performance computing and cloud computing; 3) the Maine School and Library Network; 4) the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (grade 6-12 laptops); and 5) investments in high-performance visualization and videoconferencing. This C2 project allowed Maine EPSCoR to address the cyberinfrastructure gaps at the seven campuses of the University of Maine System that had still been preventing the delivery of true end-to-end connectivity between Maine’s researchers and the new advanced networking services provided over MaineREN. The research and education focus that was enabled by this C2 project is the Maine EPSCoR Sustainability Science Initiative (SSI) Rll Track 1, with the goal of providing SSI researchers and students at the seven campuses of the University of Maine System true end-to-end connectivity. Cyberinfrastructure is an important key to helping SSI to advance their sustainability science objectives to: 1) examine interactions between social and ecological systems (SES) as landscapes change in response to urbanization, forest management, and climate variability; 2) investigate how such SES knowledge affects, and is influenced by, the actions and decisions of diverse stakeholders, with a goal of strengthening connections between knowledge and action; 3) evaluate the factors that facilitate and impede interdisciplinary collaboration, with a goal of identifying and implementing individual and institutional best practices that are needed to support successful interdisciplinary research programs in sustainability science. In particular, the C2 connectivity improvements that are now in place will support the Track 1 SSI research agenda by addressing various data management, visualization, and virtual proximity challenges that were present. Except for a small amount of support towards the AAAS review, all of the C2 budget was allocated for the capital cyberinfrastructure improvements, with the goal of enabling the effectiveness of the research and education activities of the SSI Track 1 project. This then means that there is a high degree of leveraging and synergy between the two projects, and that the personnel participation, research, diversity, and workforce development activities were supported from a variety of other sources including SSI Track 1, state funds, university funds, and UMaine System funds (and therefore are not a direct part of this award). While somewhat confusing for reporting purposes, this high degree of leveraging resulted in a tightly integrated and effective manner of furthering Maine’s research and education capacity in Sustainability Science. The implementation and administration of all three NSF EPSCoR projects (Track 1, 2, C2) has been through the Maine EPSCoR office at the University of Maine, which allowed for effective coordination and leveraging of resources and investments for the maximum benefit to Maine researchers

Maine EPSCoR End-to-End Connectivity for Sustainability Science Collaboration

Project DescriptionThis RII C2 proposal from Maine (ME) EPSCoR is focused on addressing last-mile bottlenecks at seven campuses of the University of Maine System. Maine\u27s Research and Education Network, MaineREN, delivers high performance inter-campus fiber connectivity to public and private institutions across the state, but the intra-campus networking has lacked the same investment by the state.The proposed improvements include:- Rewiring eight buildings at the University of Maine Orono Campus (UMaine) with Cat-6 cable, increasing end-to-end performance to 10 Gbps.- Upgrading the fiber backbone between the two University of Southern Maine (USM) campuses, one in Portland and one in Gorham, 12 miles apart. In addition, upgrades will be done for the buildings housing the ME RII Track-1 researchers, including the Law Building, Library, Bailey Hall, and the buildings that make up the fiber core for the Portland campus. - Upgrades to edge routers to connect to the MaineREN backbone for UMaine Augusta (UMA), UMaine Farmington (UMF), UMaine Fort Kent (UMFK), UMaine Machias (UMM), and UMaine Presque Isle (UMPI). Intellectual MeritThe proposed upgrades in network connections will greatly improve the networking capacity available to the University of Maine system and enable researchers to take advantage of state-wide upgrades with improved end-to-end performance. The proposed RII C2 connectivity improvements will support the Maine RII Track-1 Sustainability Science Initiative (SSI) by increasing bandwidth availability for the SSI data management and visualization approaches. SSI is advancing the emerging field of sustainability science in three integrative ways: 1) examining interactions between social and ecological systems (SES) as landscapes change in response to urbanization, forest management, and climate variability; 2) investigating how much SES knowledge affects, and is influenced by, the actions and decision of stakeholders, with a goal of strengthening connections between knowledge and actions; 3) evaluating the factors that facilitate and impede interdisciplinary collaboration, with a goal of identifying and implementing individual and institutional best practices that are needed to support successful interdisciplinary research programs in sustainability science.Broader ImpactsBy filling in relatively small gaps in the infrastructure, Maine will be able to make very large gains in the effectiveness of the state\u27s cyberinfrastructure (CI) that will allow researchers to fully utilize investments to improve research effectiveness, promote collaboration, improve K-12 interaction, and develop the future workforce of the state. The networking upgrades will support the 300 researchers, students, and stakeholders that are part of the SSI collaboration over 17 different disciplinary fields. The SSI activities have the potential to increase Maine\u27s research capacity and competitiveness and grow Maine\u27s green innovation economy. The proposed project will leverage the RII Track-1 programs for broader impacts

Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

From Bare Metal to Virtual: Lessons Learned when a Supercomputing Institute Deploys its First Cloud

As primary provider for research computing services at the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) has long been responsible for serving the needs of a user-base numbering in the thousands. In recent years, MSI---like many other HPC centers---has observed a growing need for self-service, on-demand, data-intensive research, as well as the emergence of many new controlled-access datasets for research purposes. In light of this, MSI constructed a new on-premise cloud service, named Stratus, which is architected from the ground up to easily satisfy data-use agreements and fill four gaps left by traditional HPC. The resulting OpenStack cloud, constructed from HPC-specific compute nodes and backed by Ceph storage, is designed to fully comply with controls set forth by the NIH Genomic Data Sharing Policy. Herein, we present twelve lessons learned during the ambitious sprint to take Stratus from inception and into production in less than 18 months. Important, and often overlooked, components of this timeline included the development of new leadership roles, staff and user training, and user support documentation. Along the way, the lessons learned extended well beyond the technical challenges often associated with acquiring, configuring, and maintaining large-scale systems.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Architecture of Environmental Risk Modelling: for a faster and more robust response to natural disasters

Demands on the disaster response capacity of the European Union are likely to increase, as the impacts of disasters continue to grow both in size and frequency. This has resulted in intensive research on issues concerning spatially-explicit information and modelling and their multiple sources of uncertainty. Geospatial support is one of the forms of assistance frequently required by emergency response centres along with hazard forecast and event management assessment. Robust modelling of natural hazards requires dynamic simulations under an array of multiple inputs from different sources. Uncertainty is associated with meteorological forecast and calibration of the model parameters. Software uncertainty also derives from the data transformation models (D-TM) needed for predicting hazard behaviour and its consequences. On the other hand, social contributions have recently been recognized as valuable in raw-data collection and mapping efforts traditionally dominated by professional organizations. Here an architecture overview is proposed for adaptive and robust modelling of natural hazards, following the Semantic Array Programming paradigm to also include the distributed array of social contributors called Citizen Sensor in a semantically-enhanced strategy for D-TM modelling. The modelling architecture proposes a multicriteria approach for assessing the array of potential impacts with qualitative rapid assessment methods based on a Partial Open Loop Feedback Control (POLFC) schema and complementing more traditional and accurate a-posteriori assessment. We discuss the computational aspect of environmental risk modelling using array-based parallel paradigms on High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms, in order for the implications of urgency to be introduced into the systems (Urgent-HPC).Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, 1 text box, presented at the 3rd Conference of Computational Interdisciplinary Sciences (CCIS 2014), Asuncion, Paragua

Collaborative Research: North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium

EPS-0918284, University of Vermont & State Agricultural College, J. L. Van Houten, linked to EPS-0918033 (University of New Hampshire), EPS-0918078 (University of Delaware), EPS-0918018 (University of Maine), EPS-0918061 (University of Rhode Island) Collaborative Research: North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (NECC) unites Maine (ME), New Hampshire (NH), Vermont (VT), Rhode Island (RI), and Delaware (DE) to support cyber-enabled research that requires analyses of large datasets. The project is organized around sharing resources, expertise and facilities in order to make cyber-enabled collaborative research possible in a sparsely populated region and among non-contiguous states. Intellectual Merit. The consortium has three primary needs to support regional, cyber-enabled research: 1) long-term leases on fiber in specific reaches across the northeast to provide high-speed connectivity with dense-wave division capability; 2) redundant, distributed Data Centers for regional cyber-enabled collaborations; and 3) cyber-knowledgeable personnel to allow researchers to access regional compute, analysis and visualization resources. Much of the physical infrastructure required for the NECC network exists, but there are four key reaches of fiber needed in ME, NH, RI and VT. In ME, two stretches are required to provide a redundant route for national and international connectivity through CANARIE (Canada\u27s advanced network organization) and along the I-95 corridor. A fiber route along the I-89 corridor provides connectivity to Boston for Vermont and New Hampshire to Boston. The researchers have been working with the Northeast Research and Education Network (NEREN) to manage the fiber network once it is in place. Broader Impacts. The possibility of a fiber network that would provide adequate bandwidth for videoconferencing has led to the NECC regional organization around outreach programs for STEM workforce development and diversity. It is planned to create a new Watershed Project through partnerships among multiple state-based programs for high school and undergraduate students. Students in this project from all the NECC states, NY and Puerto Rico, who otherwise would not even meet, will work together in collaborative watershed research. Following training, teams of high school students and teachers or undergraduates join with state programs to work on watershed science during the summer or through the summer and the academic year. The individual NECC state programs are effective in improving participation in STEM majors and diversity, but with the new fiber network and the ability to communicate over the new cybernetwork, a larger, region-wide effective program, with emphasis on cyber-based communication and research tools, is envisioned. The researchers develop a multi-faceted communication plan that will spread the word about the importance of the cyber-enabled research to the public through innovative television shows, podcasts and educational materials. An Ambassador Program will partner with citizen science groups to inform the public about the importance of a fiber network to education and science and about the potential impact of the cyber-enabled metagenomics study to the economies of the states. The fiber network will have an enormous economic impact on the region. The pilot project on metagenomics of the bacterial communities in blooms in lakes in VT, NH, ME and RI will contribute to the understanding of the origin of these blooms and their toxins that shut down access to recreational and drinking water sources. Lakes in the northeast are extremely important to economies, with estimates of $1.5B in lake-related revenues to NY, VT and Quebec each year from Lake Champlain;$2B annually from lake recreational revenues to Maine; 14,000 jobs and bring in $1.8B in revenues from boating, fishing, swimming, drinking water and property taxes to New Hampshire