External Advisory Board Members Chosen

The ACCESS Executive Council (EC) has selected 10 people to serve on the program's External Advisory Board (EAB). These folks will provide expert advice and feedback to the EC on varying topics relevant to the success of the ACCESS program, including:

• ACCESS annual program plans 
• Proposed changes to initiatives from individual ACCESS service areas
• Draft annual reports and other written documents, data or survey results 
• Making recommendations to the EC as it navigates its role to serve the evolving CI ecosystem over the life of the ACCESS program
• Giving insights into emerging programs, leadership, and trends that may guide program-wide innovation

Here are the inaugural ACCESS EAB members:

• Jing Gao, assistant professor of geospatial data science, University of Delaware
• Dana Brunson, executive director for research engagement, Internet2
• Tabitha Samuel, deputy director and HPC operations group leader, National Institute for Computational Sciences, University of Tennessee
• Bronson Messer, director of science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Jorge Vinals, director of graduate studies; professor, school of physics and astronomy, University of Minnesota
• Roy Chartier, director of architecture, Digital Research Alliance of Canada
• Olga Scrivner, assistant professor in computer science and software engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute for Science and Technology
• Robert Sinkovits, director of education and training, San Diego Supercomputer Center
• Yanni Chen, graduate research assistant, Texas Tech University
• Ruth Marinshaw, chief technical officer, Stanford Research Computing Center

Read more about the EAB members here.

The Allocations team has focused on two key efforts over the past month: improving the user demographic information fields and updating the credit exchange interface.

Optional Demographic Profile Information

In addition to basic information provided to ACCESS such as name, email, institution and academic status, optional demographic information fields are now available to staff and all ACCESS ID holders to provide a better representation of an individual's specific profile. Fields such as age, gender, racial group(s), race/ethnicities and disability or special need status are now available for optional upload. This optional demographic falls in line with the ACCESS program's vision of "effectively supporting a broad and diverse set of requirements, users, and usage modes from all areas of S&E research and education."

Updated Credit Exchange Interface Body

Users with an ACCESS Explore, Discover or Accelerate allocation may notice an updated interface when exchanging ACCESS Credits for resource-specific units. After logging in to the allocations portal, they can now find the new action and interface for "Exchange" after clicking on "Manage Allocations" and then "Manage My Projects."

International HPC Summer School: Accepting Student Applications and in Need of Reviewers

The 13th annual International HPC Summer School on HPC Challenges in Computational Sciences will take place from July 9-14 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The summer school will familiarize graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in computational sciences with major state-of-the-art aspects of HPC and Big Data Analytics for a variety of scientific disciplines, catalyze the formation of networks, provide advanced mentoring, facilitate international exchange and open up further career options. Apply here by Jan. 31.

The program also needs volunteers to review student applications, which will take place in early February. If you're interested, please complete this form.