Speaker: Ron Hutchins - Vice president for Information Technology, University of Virginia

Abstract: Ron Hutchins is currently VP of IT at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. Ron's focus at UVA has included growing research computing services in both the systems and the support team. Through two NSF awards (CC* and MRI) UVA has focused on high performance connectivity and protected data. The 2019 award of the ACCORD MRI grant is expanding support for computing resources for protected data, both HIPAA and CUI, for UVA and the other public universities in Virginia. Through this award, the ACCORD partners will be able to host protected data and perform high throughput and highly parallel computations on that data. A focus is being put on building a library of containers that can be reused to speed up approval of the computing environment for research. This presentation will include a brief overview of the ACCORD program and answer any questions.

Speaker: Michael Zink – Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Abstract: A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Boston University, and Northeastern University recently received an award from the National Science Foundation to construct and support a testbed for research and experimentation into new cloud Testbeds such as this are critical for enabling research into new cloud technologies.

Speaker: Kate Keahey – Senior Fellow, University of Chicago Computation institute

Abstract: Chameleon is a large-scale, deeply reconfigurable experimental platform built to support Computer Sciences systems research. Kate will will explain the challenges faced in building Chameleon, lessons learned, and operations experiences. She will also describe the packaging of the system that integrates both the developed capabilities and the operational experience and facilitates managing platforms of this kind.