Research Technologies:what a long, strange trip it’s been

(and will continue to be)

Craig A. Stewartstewart@iu.edu

http://rtinfo.indiana.edu/

April 2008

License Terms• Please cite this presentation as: Stewart, C.A. Research Technologies: what a long,

strange trip it’s been (and will continue to be). 2008. Presentation. Presented at: BIO Brownbag Presentation Series (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 8 Apr 2008). Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/2022/14603

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Outline

• What we do• Some history• Warping time• Making the currently possible easier• Improving quality of life in Indiana, the US, and

beyond• Money• Closing thoughts

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What do we do and whom do we serve?

• What do we do

– Things that are unique to research, scholarship, and artistic production (sometimes)

– Engage in research, development, and deployment

– Enhance IU research – new capabilities, increased importance, productivity, 2nd order benefits (staff critical mass, grant competiveness)

• Whom do we serve

– Everyone engaged in research, scholarly discovery, and artistic creation at IU (Clients & Collaborators), including students learning research techniques or doing research

– Researchers and residents of Indiana, the US

– People everywhere

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With whom do we do it?

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We don’t originate the damage to the English language…

• Cyberinfrastructure consists of computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible

• High Performance Computing, Supercomputing• Data-centric Computing• High Throughput Computing• Grid Computing• Translational research, Transformative research• Important events and lists: SCxy, International Supercomputer

Conference, Top500 list

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In practical terms

• Develop, deploy, and operate supercomputers, massive data storage systems, advanced visualization systems (advanced cyberinfrastructure deployment)

• Manage site licenses for software, create software, tune software

• Make data sources available – scientific, humanities, arts• Consulting and training• Pursue grants, execute grant funded activities

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Research Technologies organization

Pervasive Technology Labs

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Research Technologies mission

• The mission of the Research Technologies Division of UITS is to develop, deliver, and support advanced technology solutions that improve productivity of and enable new possibilities in scholarly and creative activity at Indiana University and beyond; and to complement this with education and technology translation activities to improve the quality of life of people in Indiana, the nation, and the world.

• “The future is unevenly distributed” – Larry Smarr

• We want to have the future concentrated at IU!

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An historical perspective

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Accomplishments 1956 – 1995Notable events (RT unless noted) Grants and awards Year

Marshall Wrubel named first Director of Research Computing Center

1955

Stanley Hagstrom, Franklin Prosser, Stephen Young FASTRAN (FAST FORTRAN II) for IBM 709

1963

CDC key research resource at IUB; IBM key research resource at IUPUI

1970s-mid 1980s

IU key site for porting BMDP to CDC NOS 1970sDEC grant for equipment purchase ($10M) 1980s

Hondo Late 1980s-mid 1990s

Unix Workstation Support Group created 1988Center for Innovative Computer Applications established

1989

Stat/Math established 1991Scalar Technology Array of Risc Research Systems 1991LETRS service established (DLP&UITS) 1992

SoM Library Variations Project 1993LETRS facility established (DLP&UITS) 1994

DIDO Image Bank goes online (DLP) 1994

Victorian Women Writers Project begins (DLP) I-Way - HPC Challenge award (Gannon) 1995

4/8/2008Accomplishments 1996 – 2001

Notable events (RT unless noted) Grants and awards Year

IBM SUR - SP2 (RT), Variations SUR grant (DLP)

1996

Variations first goes online (DLP) SCAAMP 1996IUB CAVE (RT), IUPUI Immersadesk.First RAC staff @ IUPUIDigital Library Program launched in its current form (IU Libraries, UITS, OVPIT, SoI)

vBNS ($394K) 1997

First SC display 1997IU Information Technology Strategic Plan Industrial Mold filling HPC Challenge award

(Bramley et al), Digital Library IBM SUR grant (DLP)

1998

Hoagy Carmichael Collection (IMLS) (DLP) 1998Pervasive Technology Labs ($30M), Letopis' Zhurnal' nykh Statei - Russian Periodical index (Dept. of Ed.) (DLP)

1999

SPSS ELA Variations2 ($3,132,596) (DLP) 2000Research Indiana Display at SC2000 (RT), Wright American Fiction joint CIC project begins (DLP)

INGEN ($105M; $6.7 to IT), US Steel Gary Works Photo Collection (LSTA) (DLP)

2000

John-E-Box invented (Huffman^2, Wernert) Charles Cushman Photo Collection (IMLS) (DLP)

2001

HPSS Distributed movers developed and implemented

2001

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Accomplishments 2001 – 2005Notable events (RT unless noted) Grants and awards Year

First university-owned 1 TFLOPS supercomputer

AVIDD ($1.8M) 2001

SAS Site License 2001Film Literature Index Online (NEH) (DLP) 2002

Ist distributed cluster > 1 TFLOPS Linpack TeraGrid ETF ($1,517,430) (RT), Stone, EVIA Digital Archive Development Phase (Mellon) (DLP)

2003

Global Arthropod Evolution - HPC Challenge Award (Stewart et al)

2003

Hess, Digital Library of the Commons (Mellon) (DLP)

2003

Newman, The "Chymistry" of Isaac Newton (NSF) (DLP)

2003

IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana (IMLS) (DLP), Digital Libraries Education Program (IMLS) (DLP)

2004

ICTC!!!!! Digital Audio Archives Project (IMLS, JHU subcontract) (DLP)

2004

Variations2 goes online for IU students and faculty (DLP)

TeraGrid RP ($3,416,693) (RT), IN Harmony (DLP), Variations3 (IMLS) (DLP)

2005

IUScholarWorks institutional repository goes online (DLP)

Gould, CAMVA (Dept. of Ed.) (DLP) 2005

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Accomplishments 2005 – present

Notable events (RT unless noted) Grants and awards YearMETACyt ($53M; 6.25 to IT), Stone, EVIA Digital Archive (Mellon) (DLP)

2005

Data Capacitor ($1,720,000) (RT), Indiana Authors and their Books (LSTA) (DLP)

2005

Reed, Sound Directions R&D Phase (NEH) (DLP)

2005

Big Red - 20 TFLOPS, 23rd on Top500, fastest academic supercomputer in western hemisphere (RT), Fedora-based IU digital library object repository goes into production (DLP)

All in a day’s work Bandwidth Challenge Honorable Mention (Simms et al.), Sakaibrary (Mellon) (DLP)

2006

BARCO VR Theatre Stone, EVIA Digital Archive Implementation Phase (Mellon) (DLP)

2006

Life Sciences Strat Plan 2006PolarGrid ($1,964,049), DLF Aquifer American Social History Online (IMLS, DLF subcontract) (DLP)

2007

Building a Bridge Bandwidth Challenge award (Simms et al), Reed, Sound Directions Preservation Phase (NEH) (DLP)

2007

IUScholarWorks e-journal hosting pilot (DLP) 2008

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Growth of Storage

Growth in archival tape storage capacity of IU’s HPSS archival research storage system

Growth in spinning disk storage of centralized (UITS) cyberinfrastructure

Growth of computational capability

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From the past to the future present

Nuclear pasta

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Collaborative Initiative on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

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• Early diagnosis is important, difficult

• Collaborations between IUSM, UITS, and Purdue School of Science developing new diagnostic tools leading to earlier diagnosis and better interventions – improving quality of life

• International research consortium storing data at Indiana University

• Largest study ever published about CIFASD (in terms of sample size) made possible by this consortium and IU data repository

DLP images

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Open Science Grid4/8/2008

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TeraGrid: 11 Resource Partners, 1 Instrument

Making the doable easier

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LEAD (http://portal.leadproject.org)

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• $1.96M NSF MRI grant for infrastructure to study polar ice sheets

• Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, Kansas University, IU, ECSU

• New Science Gateway for data access/analysis

• PI Dr. Geoffrey Fox of Indiana University’s Community Grids Lab

PolarGrid/CReSis

Focusing attention on Indiana4/8/2008

Improving quality of life 4/8/2008

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Grant success (economic development disguised as capability enhancement)

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Can you really measure quality of life?

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A few of the seven Laws of Money

First Law

• Do it! Money will come when you are doing the right thing

Staff over time

April 21, 2023

The Seven Laws of Money. Michael Phillips. (c) 1996 Shambala Publications, Inc.

Do it (where it = grants)

• A key reason to pursue particular grant opportunities, and not others, is the belief that in certain areas IU is better positioned to achieve an important task than any other university in the US

• We do make value judgments, based on IU priorities• There is a competitive element to pursuit of grants• Once you have grants, it becomes important to keep getting

them – dismounting a tiger can be difficult• Growth of staff has recently been, and will likely continue to

be, primarily through grant funding

April 21, 2023

3, 4, and 6• 3rd Law: Money is a

dream• 4th Law: Money is a

nightmare• 6th Law: You can

never accept money as a gift

• The combination of a commitment to local service and national prominence creates real but hopefully productive tension

April 21, 2023

Photo © Ridin-Hy Ranch. www.ridinhy.com/. Photo used with permission of Susan Carstens Beadnell, Ridin-Hy Ranch. May not be reused without pernission

Research Technologies values

• We value IU faculty as the intellectual leaders of the university and aim to support and collaborate with them in achieving the goals of Indiana University, and IU students as the researchers of today and tomorrow

• We value our collaborators locally, nationally, and globally, and strive to learn from those who are our competitors in scholarly and artistic pursuits

• We value the intellectual, technical, and service skills of the staff of Research Technologies (and UITS) and the intellectual freedom to push back boundaries of human scholarly and artistic accomplishment through the application of these skills.

• We strive to provide a working environment that enables professional and personal growth, respects the skill and value of each and every staff member, is intellectually stimulating and joyful, and creates a sense of satisfaction for our employees.

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We have come a long way• Image below is from a Research & Academic Computing Senior

Leadership retreat in 1997. • The big question: ?Achieve national prominence in research

computing, enabling this to be an area of competitive advantage for IU?

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A part of OVPIT/UITS• “The Indiana University Office of the Vice President for Information

Technology and Chief Information Officer provides leadership for the continued development of a modern information technology environment throughout the university. The primary responsibility of this office is the development and use of information technology in support of the university's vision for excellence in research, teaching, outreach, and lifelong learning. University Information Technology Services reports to the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology.”

• Networks: TransPAC, Abilene Ops, NLR, I-Light• Infrastructure: (More, more, more)• Support: KB; History of excellence in support generally• Enterprise software (OnCourse)• Learning Technologies (OnCourse, collaboration in STCs, etc.• Information Assurance (No hackers, please!)• Research Technologies delivers value to UITS as well!

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New new things

• Data-centric computing & Datanet• Track II solicitation• Data librarians and self-serve scholarly archiving

managed by IU workflow engines• CTSA (Clinical and Translational Science Awards)• Semantic web• Supercomputing that’s (much more) usable• Evening out the experience of our users• Cloud computing?

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A few closing thoughts• The thing about change is, things are different after.

• I’d rather be right than consistent. (Winston Churchill)

• We must know. We will know. (David Hilbert)

• It’s been a long, strange trip, but there are common threads that go back more than 50 years and will continue into the future as far as we can see.

• Working with UITS staff and IU researchers, scholars and artists, we are deciding what is the right course for the future in support of Indiana University’s missions in research, scholarship, artistic creation, education, and engagement. We will know, and we will put our knowledge to the use of the betterment of the human condition.

Acknowledgements• IU’s involvement as a TeraGrid Resource Partner is supported in part by the National Science Foundation

under Grants No. ACI-0338618l, OCI-0451237, OCI-0535258, and OCI-0504075.

• The IU Data Capacitor is supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CNS-0521433.

• This research was supported in part by the Pervasive Technology Labs and the Indiana METACyt Initiative. Both Indiana University initiatives are supported by the Lilly Endowment, Inc.

• This work was supported in part by Shared University Research grants from IBM, Inc. to Indiana University.

• The LEAD portal is developed under the leadership of IU Professors Dr. Dennis Gannon and Dr. Beth Plale, and supported by NSF grant 331480. Marcus Christie and Surresh Marru of the Extreme! Computing Lab contributed the LEAD graphics

• Many of the ideas presented in this talk were developed under a Fulbright Senior Scholar’s award to Stewart, funded by the US Department of State and the Technische Universitaet Dresden.

• Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Lilly Endowment, Inc., or any other funding agency.

• This work is made possible by the dedicated efforts of the expert staff of the Research Technologies Division of University Information Technology Services, the faculty and staff of the Pervasive Technology Labs, and the staff of UITS generally.

• Thanks to the faculty and staff with whom we collaborate locally at IU and globally (within the US via the TeraGrid, and internationally via collaboration with Technische Universitaet Dresden)

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