| Ann Hill Duin Associate Vice President and Deputy CIO University of Minnesota |
Eric F. Celeste Consultant |
| John T. Butler Director, Digital Library Development Laboratory University of Minnesota |
Kemal Badur Head of Research Computing Services College of Liberal Arts University of Minnesota |
How does a campus support research computing and its demands for large-scale computation, storage, and data transfer capacity? How might it best align infrastructure and expertise to support start-up and incubation, scale-up to full operations, and readiness for global utilization over the long term? What do existing practices at the research center and collegiate levels offer in modeling support at the institutional level? At the University of Minnesota, four in-depth interviews were conducted as a baseline assessment for the Research Cyberinfrastructure Alliance sponsored by the Office of Information Technology, University Libraries, and the Office of the Vice President for Research. These interviews reveal researchers eager to work with campus partners to relieve themselves of the day-to-day burden of administering data management solutions. Furthermore, researchers need access to development and engineering resources from time-to-time, but not regularly enough to justify hiring dedicated full-time staff. Core needs of data storage and expert assistance are similar enough that a common solution may be feasible, especially if it is layered in a way that encourages the development of some domain expertise and long term relationships between researchers and those supporting their work.
Handout (PDF)
Presentation (PDF)