SSURF Meeting Replays

The Society for Science at User Research Facilities (SSURF) spotlights, connects and champions the brilliant scientists, discoveries and resources within our nation's User Research Facilities.

SSURF Meeting Replays

Welcome & SSURF Highlights

Speaker: Jason Benedict, Board Chair

Greeting by Society for Science at User Research Facilities Board Chair Jason Benedict, including recent highlights and future planning concepts for SSURF.

U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Science Priorities

Speaker: Dr. Harriet Kung

The session features Dr. Harriet Kung, the Deputy Director for Science Programs at the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy. Dr. Kung oversees a diverse portfolio of research that advances the science needed for revolutionary energy breakthroughs and provide the Nation’s researchers with the most advanced large-scale tools of modern science.

U.S. Dept. of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase)

Speaker: Dr. Elisha M Wood-Charlson

Developed for bench biologists and bioinformaticians, The Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is a powerful open-source software and data science platform designed to meet the grand challenge of systems biology: predicting and designing biological function. KBase allows users to perform large-scale analyses and combine multiple lines of evidence to model plant and microbial physiology and community dynamics.

Spotlight: The Data Circulatory System of the Nation’s User Facilities: What’s Next

Speaker: Eli Dart

ESnet is the High Performance Networking Facility of the DOE Office of Science. ESnet interconnects the entire DOE National Laboratory complex, including all of its User Facilities. Using ESnet researchers are able to access these facilities, universities, other research institutions, science networks, and the global Internet. By connecting these globally distributed resources at very high speeds and with peak network performance, scientists can collaborate as if side-by-side while thousands of miles apart. ESnet is the data circulatory system for the DOE – if you move Big Data (or even send an email) between labs and facilities, you are using ESnet. ESnet provides specialized support to the Earth Science community, providing connections to HPC resources, data portals and repositories, instruments, sensors, and people that together enable important outcomes such as the IPCC 6th Assessment Report. This talk will describe the ESnet facility, the new state-of-the-art network ESnet is building, and the science capabilities enabled by ESnet that can be tailored to support this community.

FICUS – A User Facility Partnership Success Story

Speakers: Dr. Jeffrey Blanchard, Dr. Alison Hatt

The Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science (FICUS) initiative is a collaborative effort between the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) and the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) that provides unique opportunities for researchers to combine the power of genomics and molecular characterization in one proposed research project. The recent project awards also included access to the Bio-SANS beamline at the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) through the Center for Structural Molecular Biology(CSNB) and the data of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).

Spotlight: Exascale Computing Project

Speaker: Dr. Douglas Kothe

The mission of the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) is the accelerated delivery of a capable exascale computing ecosystem to provide breakthrough solutions addressing our most critical challenges in scientific discovery, energy assurance, economic competitiveness, and national security.

User Executive Committee Best Practices

Speakers: Dr. Siddhartha Pathak, Dr. Zachary Hood, Dr. Christine Nattrass

Hear from User Executive Committee leaders regarding key best practices and protocols to enable Users to leverage Facility technologies and resources.

Lost in Translation: Communicating Science to Politicians

Speaker: Dr. Maya Kornberg

The session presents original research on how scientists communicate with the US Congress and what challenges they face in doing so. Drawing on text analysis of congressional committee transcripts and interviews with members of Congress, staff, expert witnesses and lobbyists, the presentation will show how differences in tone, topic, and communication style matter. It will culminate in suggesting several simple strategies scientists can follow for communicating science more effectively to policymakers.

ORCID Consortium & Integration at User Facilities

Speakers: Carly Robinson, Jaclyn Flood

The US Government ORCID Consortium was created to facilitate government organizations becoming ORCID members, seeing the benefits that come with ORCID premium membership at a reduced cost and increased administrative and technical support from consortium staff. The consortium was launched in April 2020 and continues to see its membership increase. The consortium currently has 15 member organizations that include government agencies, offices, laboratories, and user facilities. US Government ORCID Consortium members use ORCID member services to authenticate ORCID iDs, system login, reading information from ORCID records to auto-populate information or pull into their systems, and writing information to researcher’s ORCID records. We’ll provide general information about the consortium, consortium updates, and member details.

Researching COVID-19 with a Unique Supercomputing Partnership - Successes of the HPC

Speaker: Barbara Helland

The COVID-19 High Performance Computing (HPC) Consortium is a unique private-public effort spearheaded in March, 2020 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the U.S. Department of Energy, and IBM to bring together federal government, industry, and academic leaders who are volunteering free compute time and resources on their world-class supercomputers. To date over 100 projects have been approved with over 600 petaflops of processing power available.

Presentation: How Federal Research Facilities Are Funded

Speaker: Alexander Ratner

The Department of Energy’s User Facilities are beholden to the federal budget process for their funding. This process is highly complicated, politicized, uncertain and subject to shifting timelines and rapid changes in amounts. While Congress debates and allocates billions of dollars every year, many scientists and laboratory leadership can find the complexity and apparent randomness of funding decisions to be incredibly frustrating.

Meet the New SSURF Board Members

The recent SSURF Board of Directors election was finalized on November 5, 2021.

New Board members have been invited to join a brief welcome and provide a quick comment on their interests in SSURF: Announcement to come!

Telling Your Story: Multimedia Best Practices

Speakers: Massie Ballon, Ricarda (Cara) Laasch, Amanda Killingsworth

A panel discussion with highlights of User Facility communications that are designed for audio or visual mediums. There are numerous options to engage scientists, students, civic and elected officials and the public. Learn from the speakers how they discern their audience(s) and strategize the messaging medium. Plus they will describe the logistics and metrics involved to maximize the impact of their stories.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Efforts Within User Facilities

Speakers: Dr. Joerg Heber, Dr. Abram Ledbetter, Trishelle Copeland-Johnson, Ph.D.

The scientific research community is evolving intentionally to recognize and purposefully engage across broader societal demographics. What does Diversity, Equity and Inclusion mean within User Facilities? Hear from our panel about ways to shape hiring, coaching, mentoring, recognition and overall culture in pursuit of these ideals.

Wrap Up and Next Events

Speaker: Executive Director Dan Powers

Overview of all the sessions’ highlights and a preview of upcoming SSURF activities open for members. By Executive Director Dan Powers.

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