Conversations with University of Washington Research Leaders

1
Conversations with University of Washington
Research Leaders
Janice Fournier, LST Tom Lewis, LST Erik
Lundberg, eScience Institute
2
Project Goals

• Learn about future directions of research
• Understand role of technology in research
• Identify resources and services that researchers
  need

3
Project Overview

• Partners UW Technology and eScience Institute
• First large-scale assessment of researchers
  technology needs conducted at UW
• UW is first among its peer institutions to
  implement a project of this type
• 50 technology professionals involved in project

4
Selection Criteria

• Number and monetary amount of current grants
  relative to others in similar disciplines
• Prestigious recognition calibrated by age
• Junior faculty Sloan Research Fellowships,
  Packard Fellowships, NSF CAREER Awards
• Senior faculty National Academies membership
• Peer recommendations

eScience Institute
5
Participants

• Phase I (July 2007 - July 2008)
• 38 researchers interviewed
• Phase II (Summer 2008)
• 89 researchers interviewed
• Total
• 127 researchers interviewed
• 264 UW researchers contacted
• 48 response rate

6
Data Analysis

• Phase II data audio recordings, field notes,
  interview summaries
• Identified unique categories of needs
• Noted both unmet needs and solutions
• Prioritized based on number of unmet needs

7
Findings
eScience Institute
8
Research Climate

• Funding constraints
• Voluminous data
• Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional
  collaborations

eScience Institute
9
IT Climate

• Rely on UWs advanced networking infrastructure
• Leverage external resources

eScience Institute
10
Researchers IT Needs
? IT Data Management Expertise ? Data
Management Infrastructure ? Computing Power ?
Communication Collaboration ? Data Analysis
Collection ? Additional Resources
11
? IT and Data Management Expertise

• Local technology supportinadequate access
• Data management expertisedesigning new systems,
  enhancing current practices
• Informationtechnologies and expertise available
  at UW

eScience Institute
12
? Data Management Infrastructure

• Access to storage infrastructurelarge quantities
  of data for current projects and data archives
• Data backupinconsistent systems among
  researchers, some unreliable practices
• Data securitysecure access needed for
  inter-institutional partners

eScience Institute
13
? Computing Power

• Computing powerever-increasing need for more
  powerful machines
• Managing and housing computing clusterschallenge
  to configure and house
• Network accessneed for high bandwidth

eScience Institute
14
? Communication and Collaboration

• Real-time collaboration technologiescritical to
  some researchers
• Videoconferencing, web conferencing, and advanced
  teleconferencing
• Everyday technologiesbasic tools are used by
  most researchers
• Phone and email, wikis and Web sites, remote
  desktop access

eScience Institute
15
? Data Collection and Analysis

• Analysisneed for specialized expertise
• Visualizationnot yet widespread
• CollectionWeb access to data, mobile devices

eScience Institute
16
? Additional Resources

• Labs equipmentneed for communal resources
• Educational technologystrong link between
  research and education
• Centralized informationsupport for research
  administration
• Group pricingnegotiating discounts for products
  and services

eScience Institute
17
Recommendations

• For central institutional unitsUW Technology,
  eScience Institute, Office of Research, Office of
  Information Management
• For the UW research community

18
Assumptions

• Researchers depend heavily upon UWs leadership
  in networking infrastructure, and the UW must
  continue to sustain and advance these resources.
• The UW should also pursue cloud-sourced solutions
  whenever suitable.

19
A New Data Management Paradigm

• Integrate human expertise with the hardware
• Data schema design, database design, parallel
  computing tasks, data analysis, data mining
• Secure data management infrastructure options
  back-ups, short- and long-term, high
  availability, cloud-sourced

20
On-Demand IT Expertise Consulting

• Data management
• Security
• Network, cluster, and storage design and
  administration
• General IT support

21
Greater Availability of Computing Power

• Sustained and on-demand
• High performance networks
• Sustained and dedicated
• Pay-as-you and on-demand

22
Communication Collaboration Toolset

• A few, basic enhancements
• Drop-in videoconferencing
• Ubiquitous Web-conferencing
• Cloud-sourced applications to ease access
• OpenID and federated AuthN/AuthZ

23
Research Commons

• Bring together researchers, their support staff,
  and central units
• Share information about what is already available
• Provide episodic technology expertise and
  consulting
• Identify collaborative opportunities wrt.
  Projects, technologies, facilities, support
  strategies
• Mechanisms for group pricing

24
UW Research Community

• Work with us to build a culture of collaboration

25
Questions/Discussion

• Conversations report is available at
  http//www.washington.edu/lst/

eScience Institute