03
May
2021

Internet2 Community Voices Series: How Rutgers University Uses Research Computing to Advance Research

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Online event explores how federated research computing and data ecosystem helps Rutger’s research mission.

Register for the Community Voices: Rutgers University Federated Research Computing and Data Ecosystem event held Thursday, May 6 at 1 p.m. ET.

By Barr von Oehsen, Associate Vice President of the Office of Advanced Research Computing, Rutgers University

At Rutgers University, the Office of Advanced Research Computing (OARC) provides university-wide, central services for strategic leadership, expertise, and support to further research and scholarly achievements on all of Rutgers’ campuses. This includes next-generation computing, data science, advanced networking, public and private clouds, and creative learning environments.

At the core of the OARC are two cyberinfrastructure teams, one focused on research and the other on infrastructure, that provide expertise in research computing and data infrastructure, including data storage and management, cybersecurity, advanced networking, automation, and cloud services. Each research team member is a computational scientist, known as a research and education facilitator (REF), who is an experienced independent researcher with deep expertise in an academic field, such as biochemistry, bioengineering, business administration, chemistry, data science, genomics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, microbiology, geographic information science, and physics.

Current areas of interests for OARC include designing and building research computing and data solutions; secure campus level distributed hybrid platforms that seamlessly tie on-premise resources with commercial cloud (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud); cybersecurity; advanced networking; computing at the edge; and the design of education, outreach, and workforce development programs aimed at developing the human expertise necessary to support these next generation technologies and research communities.

Award Helps Expand Federated Research Computing, Data Ecosystem

In October of 2019, OARC received an NSF CC* Innovation award (OAC-1925482) to expand the federated research computing and data ecosystem to include the Rutgers University Next-Generation Edge Testbed (RU-NET), a multi-layered, distributed, heterogeneous federated research platform that allows novel approaches to studying, manipulating, and securing real world network data flows from the edge.

RU-NET is designed to study different network configurations, both software and hardware, related to real world data flows. Partnerships with researchers from structural biology, materials discovery, and computer science as well as national initiatives—including COSMOS, FABRIC, and Starlight— allow us to experiment with different types of data, quantities of data, and to gain an understanding of the challenges the researchers face while moving/accessing the data, and the security requirements around the data.

Ultimately, these science drivers will be used to drive testbed designs leading to templated solutions that can be shared across a broader community. These research areas will benefit directly from the network innovation as we integrate the testbed solutions into production level services within Rutgers’ research network.

I hope you will join me on Thursday, May 6 at 1 p.m. ET for Rutgers University Federated Research Computing and Data Ecosystem to learn more about Rutgers’ federated research computing and data ecosystem and how we’ve been able to support our university’s research mission.

The Internet2 Community Voices Series provides the opportunity to hear from experts, learn from their research, and connect with the community each month beginning in May 2021. Each talk is stand-alone event, with a registration to access the live talk and the post-event recording and supporting materials.