Conversations with University of Washington Research Leaders

Janice Fournier, LSTTom Lewis, LSTErik Lundberg, eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Project Goals

Learn about future directions of research

Understand role of technology in research

Identify resources and services that researchers need

eScience Institute

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

eScience Institute

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

eScience Institute

Participants

Phase I (July 2007 - July 2008) 38 researchers interviewed

Phase II (Summer 2008)89 researchers interviewed

Total:127 researchers interviewed264 UW researchers contacted48% response rate

eScience Institute

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

eScience Institute

Findings

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Research Climate

Funding constraints

Voluminous data

Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaborations

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

IT Climate

Rely on UW’s advanced networking infrastructure

Leverage external resources

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Researchers’ IT Needs:

eScience Institute

IT & Data Management Expertise

Data Management Infrastructure

Computing Power

Communication & Collaboration

Data Analysis & Collection

Additional Resources

IT and Data Management Expertise

Local technology support—inadequate access

Data management expertise—designing new systems, enhancing current practices

Information—technologies and expertise available at UW

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Data Management Infrastructure

eScience Institute

Access to storage infrastructure—large quantities of data for current projects and data archives

Data backup—inconsistent systems among researchers, some unreliable practices

Data security—secure access needed for inter-institutional partners

eScience Institute

Computing Power

Computing power—ever-increasing need for more powerful machines

Managing and housing computing clusters—challenge to configure and house

Network access—need for high bandwidth

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Communication and Collaboration

Real-time collaboration technologies—critical to some researchers

Videoconferencing, web conferencing, and advanced teleconferencing

Everyday technologies—basic tools are used by most researchers

Phone and email, wikis and Web sites, remote desktop access eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Data Collection and Analysis

Analysis—need for specialized expertise

Visualization—not yet widespread

Collection—Web access to data, mobile devices

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Additional Resources

Labs & equipment—need for communal resources

Educational technology—strong link between research and education

Centralized information—support for research administration

Group pricing—negotiating discounts for products and services eScience Institute

eScience Institute

eScience Institute

Recommendations

For central institutional units—UW Technology, eScience Institute, Office of Research, Office of Information Management

For the UW research community

eScience Institute

Assumptions

Researchers depend heavily upon UW’s 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.

eScience Institute

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

eScience Institute

On-Demand IT Expertise & Consulting

Data management

Security

Network, cluster, and storage design and administration

General IT support

eScience Institute

Greater Availability of Computing Power

Sustained and on-demand

High performance networks

Sustained and dedicated

Pay-as-you and on-demand

eScience Institute

Communication & Collaboration Toolset

A few, basic enhancements…

Drop-in videoconferencing

Ubiquitous Web-conferencing

Cloud-sourced applications to ease access

OpenID and federated AuthN/AuthZ

eScience Institute

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

eScience Institute

UW Research Community

Work with us to build a culture of collaboration

Questions/Discussion

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

eScience Institute

eScience Institute