Training the Next Generation of Research Computing System Administrators in the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium
Speakers: Shelley Knuth and Craig Earley, University of Colorado Boulder
In this talk, we will share the recent activities and success of CU Boulder Research Computing (CURC). Highlights include contributions to national projects such as ACCESS and NAIRR, collaborations across the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) to promote innovation and inclusion, and the beginning of year four of CURC’s five-year strategic plan.
We will then spotlight a two-year project educating cohorts of students drawn from institutional members of RMACC. In this NSF-funded effort, a small group of students shadow CURC system administrators to develop skills in administering large-scale campus computational systems to support innovative research. The students work closely with the team and under the tutelage of experienced system administrators. They learn how to navigate the design, procurement, deployment, and administration of the system. The program culminates in an on-site experience in which students deploy and perform initial administration with new hardware. Student efforts have contributed to expanding the capacity of CU Boulder’s Alpine high-performance computing cluster, a regional resource for RMACC.