Dear Colleagues and all users of HPCF,
TL;DR:
(i) user meeting Fri 01/26/2024 10:00 in MP102/103,
(ii) send publication info!
(iii) hopefully MRI proposal this year
Publications:
To start with item (ii), since it is really the most important, please always remember to send me the citation of publications that we can list on the HPCF webpage! This is invaluable to demonstrate our community's weight for our university administration -- all new by now really! -- and will be used in future NSF (or other) proposals. Include student theses (undergrad, MS, PhD), as well, please.
User meeting:
Item (i) calls for a general user meeting next Friday 01/26/2024 at 10:00, which is the Friday before semester start. I will be in the physical location Math/Pysc 102 or 103, depending on crowd size, but the meeting will also be in Webex and recorded. The Webex link will be in the reminder posting on Friday morning. If you plan to attend, maybe reply to this mail -- with indication of in-person or online -- so I can plan (and make doubly sure you receive the web link). In particular if you have to RSVP negative, feel free to include notes (see below).
HPCF proposals / purchases:
I really thank a user who reminded me by asking about purchase (and MRI) that I should inform you all better. Some of you may recall me saying -- and certainly sharing with the governance committee -- that we should participate in the November 2023 NSF MRI competition. Since the NSF changed the time frame, this was the second MRI competition in the year after one in January 2023. Future ones will be in November of each year. In fact, I had been suggesting throughout the preceding year that we should hold back on any purchase, until after that MRI was submitted (so we do not look rich at the time of submission). Given I am aware of 10+ faculty who were at some point ready to contribute funding, my suggestion was not crazy, but did lose out on the energy of the willingness to contribute at the time.
Last year 2023, we had a task force on computing (under the RCA and led by the VPs for Research and for IT, chaired by our own Zhibo Zhang and Karuna Joshi). When this taskforce came together, it was frankly a year after the intent had been born, yet it was clever timing in that we were supposed to have a new provost, so I understand the thinking of the VPs. It would yet have fit with the timing that I angled for, but the taskforce worked out quite differently than expected by me at least. In short, the taskforce also considered many other aspects of computing (cloud) and necessary issues (storage, controlled access needed by certain types of research, etc.), so HPCF was not the focus. Inasmuch as HPCF was a focus at times, there was an endorsement of the concept and a request for resources, but no concrete plan.
It then came also to pass that it never came to a campus competition for the 3 MRI slots for November 2023, since all proposals that had gone forwarded the previous January were allowed to compete a second time. This is the reason why you did not hear from me late last year. I assure you, if I had led an MRI proposal, you would have heard from me through this channel. So, in this spirit, consider this the first communication for my suggestion to compete for the November 2024 NSF MRI. But that said, this meeting can and should really provide a broader forum for ideas and other channels how to continue funding HPCF for all of us users.
Closing
In summary, please come to the user meeting, if you can; please RSVP if able to plan ahead; feel free to include comments in your RSVP that I will collect; I will introduce the HPCF RAs at the meeting; I can share more details on last year; and we should discuss with those at the meeting what plan we all see going forward.
Matthias Gobbert, Math & Stat, gobbert@umbc.edu,
chair, HPCF Governance Committee
