Mission
CI CoE provides expertise and active support to cyberinfrastructure practitioners at NSF Major Facilities in order to accelerate the data lifecycle and ensure the integrity and effectiveness of the cyberinfrastructure upon which research and discovery depends.
Platform for knowledge sharing and community building
Key partner for the establishment and improvement of Major Facilities with advanced CI architecture designs
Grounded in re-use of dependable CI tools and solutions
Forum for discussions about CI sustainability and workforce development and training
Overall, the CI CoE was very proactive in enabling and advancing constructive
conversations
during the development of the NCAR-NEON cyberinfrastructure technical plan and in
providing
feedback that improved the quality of the plan. The CI CoE facilitated weekly
telecons among
NCAR, NEON, and the CI CoE to discuss the proposed project and to provide guidance.
Discussions
during the telecom were mostly high level, helping to identify needs and priorities
for the
cyberinfrastructure collaborations, but also identifying gaps in the technical plan
as well as
providing overviews of various alternative implementation strategies. The
discussions were always
constructive, collaborative, and respectful of all participants. The CI CoE also
undertook written
feedback on the technical plan at several stages of development. Again, the comments
were constructive
and improved the quality of the final document. The CI CoE’s engagement was critical
to preparing
the final technical plan, in part because of the CI CoE’s familiarity with NEON’s
data
cyberinfrastructure, but also as external computer science experts familiar with the
computational
needs of the modeling (NCAR) and the data (NEON) and serving to bridge the two
different areas
of expertise.
The CI CoE had four types of profound influence on NEON developers. First, as we
transitioned
from construction to operations, our developers benefited from greater awareness of
the wider
NSF CI community practices. Second, deep engagement with CI CoE experts produced
three major
technologies insertions into NEON CI, remarkably within 6 months. Third, open dialog
and
prototyping with CI CoE experts affirmed our workflow-based sensor message handling
strategy and
built our confidence to invest in this novel method. NEON's CI and Data Sciences
team mission
includes advancing methods and ecological science; interaction with CI CoE nudged
our efforts
ahead significantly through community workgroup involvement, presentations and
publications.
CICoE has been a valuable resource for the Ocean Observatories Initiative CI function. Their topics are relevant to our needs and have provided beneficial input to help us reach our goals. I look forward to working with them in the future to continue to meet the unique challenges facing research computing.
During the 2020 U.S. Academic Research Fleet Identity Management (IdM) Engagement with CI CoE Pilot, I participated from a customer perspective looking for help solving a complex and custom Identity Management problem on behalf of the fleet. The CI CoE Pilot was able to provide access to subject matters expertise for consulting and testing. During the engagement we were able to successfully assess the problem scope, draft a recommended solution, and proof of concept test several components of that solution. Following the engagement we have been able to leverage the recommended solution and newly established relationships from the engagement to write a proposal that would implement a Federated Identity Management solution for the U.S. Academic Research Fleet. Our engagement with CI CoE Pilot has been instrumental in accelerating efforts to realize this much needed service.
