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Laura Owen (4031), provides primary office support for the thematic areas, with Beth McKown (4100) as back up backup (with the exception of Deanna Spivey who is the back up backup for Culture and Society).
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- Office Manager: Laura Owen (Primary for all theme areas), Deanna Spivey (back up backup for Culture and Society): The office managers will help you book and get reimbursed for NCSA related travel, reserve meeting spaces, find supplies for you or order supplies, equipment, pizza etc (assuming you have a budget code to charge it to!), fill out paperwork for new employees and students, and help advise you on how to do nearly everything.
- Facilities: Tedra Tuttle (Ground Floor, 1002A): Office keys, configuration of key cards, use of NCSA building, furniture requests. If you want to have white boards, monitors, pin boards etc hung in your office, this can be arranged through an appropriate office manager.
- Public Affairs: Kristin Williamson: External and internal communications, website design and development, design and production of promotional materials, media relations, event coordination and promotion (including event websites, registration forms, logistics, calls for participation, etc), tours of Blue Waters, Bytes and Pieces weekly NCSA newsletter, ACCESS external newsletter, design and production of promotional materials, copy-editing/proofreading, creation of graphics and info graphics, photography. Email news stories to the team at newsdesk@ncsa.illinois.edu
- Finance: Alan Dudley: pre-award ( budget preparation for proposals, proposal submission, etc), post-award, accounting/statements, audit support, government costing compliance, cost-recovery rate development, software expertise (Banner, BA3, Excel), budgeting, staff planning and other financial issues. Email the finance office at faaccounting@ncsa.illinois.edu.
- Human Resources: Amy Dillman: recruiting and hiring NCSA-funded staff, postdocs and graduate students, appointment changes, visas. Note that if you have a 0% NCSA appointment, or are a sponsored guest, then your own HR issues (vacations, sick leave, salary, etc) should all be conducted through your home unit's office.
- Information Technology Services: Douglas Fein: desktop support, data backup, printers/copiers/fax, mailing lists, website hosting, issue tracking, wiki, FTP, AFS, version control servers, MySQL, wired/wireless networking, linux, jabber, portal development, internal administrative tools (MIS).
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- If you have not already, please go and visit Gabrielle Allen (Rm 4034) and/or Amanda Lombardo (Rm 4029) on the fourth floor of NCSA so that we can discuss how to get started at NCSA in person, and in particular discuss any space needs or items not described below. We will happily tell you people that you might want to get to know in the building, or give you a tour.
- Obtain your NCSA Kerberos username and password from Research Coordinator (Amanda Lombardo, alombar@illinois.edu.).
- Unless otherwise discussed, faculty affiliates will by default be assigned shared cubicle space on the fourth floor of NCSA in office 4103. This large office is currently shared with staff from the NCSA business office. We will assign a number of faculty to each desk so that you have somewhere to work and leave items at NCSA in the shelf-space above each desk.
- If you have funds at NCSA (e.g. through the Faculty Fellows program or start up funds) you will be sent a budget code and you will be given a login on the BA3 accounting system (ba.eng.illinois.edu) through which you can check balances and receive monthly statements. If you need to spend against these funds before you receive the code contact Amanda Lombardo.
- Currently you will be given an NCSA email address (almost certainly with the same username as your illinois address) e.g. <username>@ncsa.illinois.edu — email to this address which includes some important mail lists used by NCSA, will all be forwarded typically to your regular Illinois address. Without trying to rationalize why this is done, you should be aware that we've found some problems with either the forwarding not being set up, or if people already had accounts from way-back (e.g. as a TeraGrid user when at a different place) the wrong address is being used. We hope to fix this very soon, but for now, please send a mail to yourself at your NCSA address, and check that you receive it. If you do not, please tell Amanda Lombardo <alombar@illinois.edu>.
- Review and sign-off on the NCSA Security Document using your login and Kerberos password. This document will be sent to you via email after your start date (see “NCSA Security Strategy” below.)
- If you would like to have your students or postdocs working in the building as part of your NCSA-related work, please start by contacting Amanda Lombardo.
- Add a photo and personalize information on your NCSA electronic directory profile at https://internal.ncsa.illinois.edu/mis/directory/. Go to “My Profile” on the left menu and be sure to fill in information on both the “Staff Directory Listing” and “Additional Information” tabs located at the top. To save changes, click “Publish” at bottom of the page. If you don't have a good photo, go and see Steve Duensing in Rm 3022 and he will take one for you.
- Report anticipated office hours to Theme Lead and Research Coordinator.
- Make friends with the front line IT support, Alex Farthing and Brandon Carswell in Rm 4042, ask them to set up your laptop so you can print at NCSA.
- Check that your ID swipe card works by running it through the reader at the NCSA front door and seeing that the led turns green (recommend that you try this during work hours before an urgent trip to NCSA out of hours).
- Note that each floor of NCSA has a kitchen with a shared fridge/freezer and microwave. The ground floor has some vending machines up by the class rooms.
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More About Some Basic NCSA Services
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- NCSA Fellows program - Awards typically of around $25K to fund new collaborations between NCSA staff and Campus faculty and researchers. The call for proposals comes out around the end of the calendar year, with a review panel in spring, and new fellows starting in the summer. The solicitation is targeted at areas of strategic importance for NCSA.
- SPIN program - Undergraduates are encouraged to take part in research, development and innovation projects at NCSA both during the academic year and the summer. The Students Pushing Innovation (SPIN) program at NCSA runs a matchmaking open day in the Spring semester where students from across the campus meet with NCSA staff and faculty. The SPIN program is particularly interested in facilitating projects that support new application areas and encourage more diversity at NCSA.
- Colloquia series - NCSA brings in a number of distinguished and visionary speakers each semester, typically the colloquia are from 11 to noon on a Friday in the NCSA auditorium. We try and organize a schedule so that visitors get to interact with different groups at NCSA and the campus, and welcome partnering with other units. We would like suggestions for colloquia speakers! Note that the talks are recorded and available on our NCSA YouTube channel.
- Postdoc Program - We are rolling out a program to ensure that postdocs have the best experience during their time at NCSA, with mentoring, training, and exposure to many different areas of research and cyberinfrastructure development and operations. We believe NCSA can provide a unique interdisciplinary and computational experience.
- Administration - We work with the help of the NCSA Academic Council on the policies and procedures most important for the broad research and education agenda at NCSA, including space planning and faculty appointments.
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