VPAC How Can We Help Your Research

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VPAC How Can We Help Your Research?

• Bill Appelbe
• CEO and Chief Scientist
• VPAC
• May 29th 2009

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Outline

• How is the research landscape changing
• What does that mean for researchers
• VPAC a short history
• VPAC services and projects with Victorian
  researchers
• Where to from here?

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The Changing Research Landscape - the old

• Traditional research
• Individual small research groups, little
  planning
• Reward and promotion for individual contribution
  and specialization
• Grants based on peer review - to individuals and
  small groups (ARC, NHMRC)
• Little oversight once grant awarded, e.g., CRCs
• IT just a tool, e.g., for preparation of papers
  or data analysis
• Limited specialization or differentiation across
  Universities -
• Any institution could hire a prima donna in a
  new specialist area

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The Changing Research Landscape - the new

• eResearch or the systems approach to research
• Large collaborative, multidisciplinary,
  distributed research groups
• Reward and promotion based on contribution to the
  groups success
• Grants to national consortia based on national
  community consensus (NCRIS - PfC, AuSCOPE, ABIN)
• Ongoing oversight, approval of annual
  budget/business plans
• IT a strategic tool
• An enabler for collaboration, modeling, workflow
• Specialization and differentiation across
  Universities -
• No institution can afford to try to be national
  leaders in everything!

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Outline

• How is the research landscape changing
• What does that mean for researchers
• VPAC a short history
• VPAC services and projects with Victorian
  researchers
• Where to from here?

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What does that mean for individual researchers

• Collaboration.
• Beyond just co-authors on papers
• Strategic planning beyond the next grant
  proposal
• IT as a key research enabler
• What could I do with unlimited access to IT and
  other research infrastructure?
• Processing, Storage, Visualization
• Equipment and infrastructure elsewhere?
• What is the limiting factor in my research?
• Time to setup experiments and models? Process
  results? Understand data?
• Scale of problems?
• Think beyond more graduate students (slave
  labor) and

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Outline

• How is the research landscape changing
• What does that mean for researchers
• VPAC a short history
• VPAC services and projects with Victorian
  researchers
• Where to from here?

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VPAC A Short History

• Formed in 2000 to provide HPC Services to 6
  founding Member Universities
• Principle of providing research services for
  Members in proportion to subscription
• From its inception, has provided research support
  beyond just HPC cycles
• Summer internships
• Expertise/eResearch Grants to boost Member HPC
  usage and expertise, funded by APAC

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VPAC A Short History (cont.)

• Why VPAC?
• Economy of scale and critical mass
• Individual universities do not have the resources
  to provide their own HPC services
• Research services focus
• University ITS has a different focus
• Support/foster collaboration
• Between Universities, with industry,

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Evolution of Australian eResearch
NCRIS-2
NCRIS-1
APAC
pre-APAC
1995 2000
2005
2010

• National HPC collaboration funding National
  Facility (ANU) state-based HPC facilities
  (PACs)
• Merit-allocation for HPC
• Incipient grid portals operations

• National research infrastructure collaboration
  funding, including Advanced Computing (PfC)
• Community-based
• Maturing grid computing

• Universities purchased and supported their own
  HPC little collaboration
• Growing concern that Australia was falling
  behind

• SuperScience Initiative
• State investment BRC. MASSIVE, VLSCI

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VPAC in 2009

• Employ over 60 staff at 4 locations
• Profit of over 4M from commercial research
  services that complement Member support
• More than 100M in grants in collaboration with
  Members
• Lead Agent for national programs
• ARCS Australian Research Collaboration Services

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Outline

• How is the research landscape changing
• What does that mean for researchers
• VPAC a short history
• VPAC services and projects with Victorian
  researchers
• Where to from here?

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VPAC Services for Members

• Traditional HPC Cycles storage
• La Trobe gets 1 million CPU hrs/year
• We support Hercules locally
• Installation of software
• We spend 200K p.a. on licenses
• Software development
• E.g., for eResearch projects
• Expert advice and joint collaborations
• 200hrs last quarter

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VPAC Services for Members (cont.)

• Training
• HPC, molecular modeling, visualization
• At VPAC or onsite here at La Trobe
• Collaboration tools, with ARCS
• Wikis, Plone, Sakai
• EVO and Access Grid
• Building collaboration networks
• E.g., with VLSCI and MASSIVE
• Joint grant proposals

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Other State Projects VPAC is engaged in

• VLSCI (Parkville)
• 100M the Victorian Life Sciences Computational
  Initiative
• VPAC is working with UoM and others and VPAC has
  deployed VLSCI stage 0
• VPAC collaborating on all levels of the project
  acquisition, support, business plans,

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Other State Projects VPAC is engaged in (cont.)

• MASSIVE (Clayton)
• 5M initiative partners VPAC, CSIRO, NCI,
  Monash, and the Australian Synchrotron
• Image processing and visualization facility
• Real-time image processing, esp. for biomedical
  imaging Beamline

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Other State Projects VPAC is engaged in (cont.)

• Goal
• Seamless access by all Victorian researchers to
  the appropriate facility
• Work in progress
• Other activities
• AutoCRC
• La Trobes new SuperScience research centre in
  Molecular Science

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VPAC vs VeRSI

• Somewhat problematic having two state eResearch
  service providers
• BUT
• Different business models
• VPAC is incorporated, VeRSI is a joint venture
• Different but overlapping Members
• Different but overlapping services
• VeRSIs focus is pilot projects and outreach
• Different funding models
• VeRSI is funded by a fixed-term state grant

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Outline

• How is the research landscape changing
• What does that mean for researchers
• VPAC a short history
• VPAC services and projects with Victorian
  researchers
• Where to from here?

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Where to from here?

• Embedding VPAC staff at La Trobe is a real goal
• Like we have at Monash, Melbourne,
• We need a theme project to drive it
• We are always ready to help
• From the individual researcher up to the DVCRs
  level
• We pride ourselves on rapid response
• help_at_vpac.org, or bill_at_vpac.org
• More information on services on our website
• Initiatives like BRC and the Molecular Centre are
  emerging opportunities

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• Questions!