NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure very much appreciates the contributions of everyone involved with creating and successfully launching the ACCESS program. During these arduous first seven months, leaders across all the awarded teams have set constructive, collaborative tones. The agility exhibited by each of the many workgroups is fulfilling our goal of continuous services to researchers while also introducing novel methods to expand the advanced CI ecosystem. Your clear descriptions and documentation of our plans are essential to highlighting our intentions to broaden participation.

Change can be hard for some – consistent messaging during PEARC, SC22 and our numerous smaller public engagements have calmed some of that general apprehension. Of course, success ultimately manifests via our stakeholders in research, education and HPC resource provisioning. Your trusted relationships with stakeholders have led to remarkable levels of response to our calls for EAB members, allocation reviewers, User Support and pilots. The advanced CI ecosystem will always present more opportunities to serve, more communities to engage with, more services to consider and challenges to address – I look forward to helping you wherever feasible. In the meanwhile, I hope you share a sense of ownership for these initial accomplishments. 

– Tom Gulbransen, NSF/OAC Program Officer

EAB Updates

ACCESS received 92 nominations for its External Advisory Board (EAB) and plans to announce the nine selected members in the coming days. ACCESS leadership is excited about the response to this call from the community and believes that this response bodes well for having solid governance and community engagement.

The Allocations team has been busy reconciling the recommendations made by their review panel for requests to the Maximize allocation opportunity, ACCESS's largest allocation type, for compute, visualization and storage awards on ACCESS resources. Allocations staff and ACCESS Resource Providers will look to balance award recommendations across the various platforms until the allocated amounts match the availability. Award notifications are expected to go out to investigators later this week. The team is also preparing for the next submission period starting on Dec. 15 and ending on Jan. 15, 2023. Requests will be panel reviewed during the first week of March 2023 and allocations will begin or be renewed on April 1, 2023.

ACCESS staff and collaborators are reminded to start thinking about any allocation needs for spring semester courses. Professors who could benefit from access to a unified, shared resource for students to utilize for their associated assignments are encouraged to request ACCESS allocations. Please indicate the request is for "classroom or training activities."

TOMORROW: NSF Webinar for CyberTraining and SCIPE Solicitations

The NSF will conduct a webinar this Wednesday, Dec. 14 at 2 p.m. ET to describe two open solicitations. Training-based Workforce Development for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (CyberTraining NSF 23-520) and Strengthening Cyberinfrastructure Professionals Ecosystem (SCIPE NSF 23-521) proposals are due Feb. 23, 2023. The CyberTraining solicitation has been updated to emphasize the importance of training and nurturing groups that are underrepresented in the use of advanced CI for research. The SCIPE solicitation focuses on services that were previously part of CyberTraining NSF-22-574. Register for the webinar here.

International HPC Summer School: Now 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, 2023 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, 2023.

The program also needs volunteers to review student applications, which will take place in early Feb. 2023. If you're interested, please complete this form.