How IT can support research in all disciplines, and serve to interconnect the campus with the greater Bay Area research community.
The original presentation of this information is available in PDF form: Current trends in research.
A tabular presentation of this information is available in PDF form: Strategic technology needs for research at UC Berkeley.
Current trends in research
- Increased focus on interdisciplinary research by faculty and funders.
- Increased emphasis on multi-campus research programs and projects.
- Increased emphasis on research collaborations with industry.
- Increased reliance on high-throughput computing.
- Increased reliance on high-bandwidth, networked computing capability.
- Increased need for sophisticated visualization and simulation and modeling software.
- Need to archive, manipulate, and mine increasingly large databases.
Sources
Presentation by Vice Chancellor for Research Beth Burnside to the Berkeley IT Architecture Committee (ITAC) about the IT needs of campus researchers (March 1, 2005).
Bill Decker and Bonnie Neas, Research Universities and the Central IT Organization: Rebuilding the Partnership. EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2003. [PDF]
Strategic technology needs for research at UC Berkeley
Research 1: Basic IT resources
Priority: 1 (highest)
Description
Researchers and research support staff across disciplines require the use of common systems or technical compatibility, else significant reinvestment and training is needed for each new research initiative.
Examples of this issue
- Departments engaging in joint research use very different administrative and research systems and tools today, slowing research and increasing costs.
- To reduce operating costs, personal computers and servers are often used well beyond standard three-year life expectancy. This results in a vast array of aging hardware and software, incompatible between departments.
- Shifting from one platform to another is very time-intensive and costly, reducing interest in moving to standard solutions.
Goals for this issue
- Publish minimum standards and baseline requirements for common computing environments in support of research.
- Develop lifecycle plans to annually evaluate baseline for coming year.
- Provide all researchers and research support staff (as appropriate) with computing devices compatible with minimum standards, refreshed on regular schedule (bronze level).
- Publish service catalog of available computing environments and standards for research computing.
Current actions taking place to meet goals
Future actions needed to meet goals
Research 2: Technical support
Priority: 2
Description
Campus research units have considerable hardware and software resources which often are administered part time, poorly configured, and insecurely configured.
Examples of this issue
- Many grants provide for one-time capital purchases but system administration operating costs are not covered. Student labor is often used, irrespective of their formal training, skills, or interest.
- Campus models that include recurring charges for services (including the new data center) don't match well with grant funding. It is easier for the research unit to use the grant's one-time funds to buy its own hardware than to commit to ongoing costs for storage.
Goals for this issue
- Develop shared resource pool of complementary skills that are dedicated to supporting researchers.
- Provide IT "boot camp" training for all student IT employees supporting research.
- Create Technical Resource Manager position to serve as a single point of contact and identify and plan use of technical resources across campus.
- Free up resources through Resource Manager to provide enhanced and custom service opportunities where required.
Current actions taking place to meet goals
Future actions needed to meet goals
Research 3: Advanced collaborative and multi-site research
Priority: 3
Description
Research endeavors between campus units or with private sector increasingly rely on shared resources located at multiple institutions and companies.
Examples of this issue
- Today's collaboration tools at Berkeley are extremely limited. Most collaboration consists of email-based file sharing. Lack of standards or shared environments necessitates the development of costly innovation and duplication.
- Private-sector collaboration often depends on adapting to tools and standards provided by each company that are often incompatible with those available to the research unit.
Goals for this issue
- Provide open source, standard online collaboration environments accessible from multiple departments, campuses, and private enterprise.
- Invest in next-generation tools, including real-time collaboration, Croquet, Sakai, and other open-source solutions.
Current actions taking place to meet goals
Future actions needed to meet goals
Research 4: Data stewardship and digital asset management
Priority: 4
Description
Disparate, very large data sets require next-generation metadata management solutions and application archiving practices and tools to ensure availability of data.
Examples of this issue
- Stewardship of research data is essential to support researchers' needs to archive, manipulate, and mine increasingly large databases.
- Collections have critical digital asset-management needs that are being individually solved by departments at great expense.
- Database management is often left to students or other nonprofessional management, resulting in considerable performance and security weaknesses.
- Backups for protection of digital assets are often done locally due to operational cost constraints.
Goals for this issue
- Provide options for storing very large data sets that can be actively accessed by multiple groups.
- Provide backup and archive solutions to all research projects.
- Provide comprehensive digital asset-management solutions, including application archiving, to all researchers.
- Participate in and/or lead national efforts to develop metadata standards for core research areas.
Current actions taking place to meet goals
Future actions needed to meet goals
Research 5: High-performance computing, simulation, and visualization environments
Priority: 5
Description
Computing power and research needs double on average every 18 months, with requirements for increased capacity of networks, storage, and visualization tools growing even faster.
Examples of this issue
- Increasingly, traditional research techniques are augmented by or replaced with technology-based tools, methods, and simulations. Aging computer systems prevent timely research and use of newest-generation tools.
- Cross-discipline research often requires high-speed computing. Many of the buildings on campus do not have sufficient physical infrastructure for standard networking, much less research-level bandwidth.
- Shared research tools between campuses or companies require substantial bandwidth often in excess of what is available.
- Ultra-high-performance computing is needed to support researchers' demands for high-throughput and high-bandwidth networked computing, and sophisticated visualization, simulation, and modeling software.
Goals for this issue
- Provide sufficient networking and computing resources to enable access to remote high-performance computing environments.
- Regularly tested and verified access to remotely based supercomputing, high-performance computing, storage, visualization, and simulation environments.
- Publish inventory of available campus and systemwide research environments, computing infrastructure, research tools, and applications.