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NCSA for Faculty, Postdocs and Students

Authors: Amanda Thibault, Gabrielle Allen

This page aims to collect together basic information about NCSA particularly for faculty affiliates, postdocs and students. Note it is a work in progress, and we would like to keep it as succinct and up-to-date as possible, so let us know if you have additional questions, something isn't clear, or looks wrong. 

Questions still to answer:

  • If you want to move furniture, find different furniture, or get something hung on a wall do you ask Laura or Tedra?
  • If you have funds at NCSA, e.g from start up or faculty fellow award, do you ask Amanda or Alan for the budget code? Does Alan tell us when they are ready to be sent out or do we need to ask for them? 
  • If you want to hire an undergraduate student (or maybe also a graduate student?) at an hourly rate do you ask Laura?
  • If you want to hire a postdoc, should you go straight to Amy or talk to Laura or Amanda first? 
  • If you want to order a new laptop or other IT equipment on funds held at NCSA who do you ask (and what if funds are not at NCSA)
  • If you want to talk to someone (just one person lets say) about cyberinfrastructure at NCSA who would you ask?
  • Bigger section on including NCSA facilities, services, staff etc in new proposals or funding.
  • NCSA internal administration tool – not sure what is relevant here, perhaps point out approving student work hours, maybe other useful things. 
  • What happens to the footage from the video cameras, who is looking at it? 

NCSA Organization

Directors Office

  • NCSA Director: H. Edward (Ed) Seidel 
  • NCSA Executive Director: Danny Powell
  • Chief Scientist: Bill Gropp
  • Senior Project Manager: Jay Roloff

Projects Coordinated Through Directors Office

  • Blue Waters (Bill Kramer)

  • XSEDE (John Towns)
  • National Data Service
  • LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) (Athol Kemball and Don Petravick)
  • MidWest Big Data Hub (Ed Seidel)

Directorates

  • Research and Education (Gabrielle Allen)
    • Research Coordinator (Amanda Thibault) 
    • Theme Areas:

      • Most faculty, postdocs and students at NCSA will have appointments within one of the following six thematic areas.

      • Bioinformatics and Health Sciences (C. Victor Jongeneel)
      • Computing and Data Sciences (Gabrielle Allen)
      • Culture and Society (Donna Cox)
      • Earth and Environment (Shaowen Wang)
      • Materials and Manufacturing (Narayana Aluru)
      • Physics and Astronomy (Athol Kemball)
    • Coordination with Educational Programs
  • Integrated Cyberinfrastructure (Randy Butler)
    • ADD DIVISIONS
  • Economic and Societal Impact (Scott Wilkin)
    • ADD DIVISIONS

 

Administrative Support Personnel

Director's Office

  • Beth McKown (Rm 4100)
  • Laura Owen (also deals with Research and Education) (Rm 4031)

Office Managers

  • Pam Joop, Private Sector Program
  • Amber Moore, XSEDE
  • Patty Roth, Human Resources
  • Deanna Spivey, Culture and Society
  • Jean Soliday, Advanced Digital Services
  • Susan Vinson, Blue Waters

Administrative Services

Below are listed some of the core administrative services at NCSA provided in the different departments. Depending on what you need, you should feel free to check with Laura Owen or Amanda Thibault for advice on what help is available and where to get it. Note that expensive or time consuming activities may require funds and/or negotiation of availability etc.

  • Office Manager: Laura Owen (Most theme areas), Deanna Spivey (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: Elizabeth (Liz) Murray: 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.
  • 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. 
  • 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).

Getting Started at the NCSA

  1. If you have not already, please go and visit Gabrielle Allen (Rm 4034) and/or Amanda Thibault (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.
  2. Obtain your NCSA Kerberos username and password from Research Coordinator (Amanda Thibault, alombar@illinois.edu.). 
  3. 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. 
  4. 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 Thibault <alombar@illinois.edu>.
  5. 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.)
  6. 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 Thibault.
  7. 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 4002F and he will take one for you. 
  8. Report anticipated office hours to Theme Lead and Research Coordinator.
  9. Make friends with the front line IT support, Alex Farthing and Bruce Mather in Rm 4042, ask them to set up your laptop so you can print at NCSA.
  10. 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).
  11. 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. 

More About Some Basic NCSA Services

Basic IT Services

  • General Help Desk: For laptop or desktop issues, please contact Alex Farthing or Bruce Mather at 244-5701, email help@ncsa.illinois.edu or stop by their office in Room 4042. Alex and Bruce can help with all your computer issues and will install and assist with NCSA supported hardware and software. The IT Services wiki can also assist with general issues: https://wiki.ncsa.illinois.edu/display/ITS/IT+Services. If you have general problems with getting IT services at NCSA, the first place to try is the desktop support team. If you can’t find them or they are unable to answer your question (and the wiki URL did not help), send a note to help@ncsa.illinois.edu, and a ticket will be created for a group that can assist you. If you are not getting a response or your problem requires immediate results, you can also contact Doug Fein (dfein@ncsa.illinois.edu), manager of the NCSA IT Services group.
  • Network Issues: For wireless, it is recommended that you use the campus provided IllinoisNet. To connect, follow the instructions at http://www.cites.illinois.edu/wireless/wpa2/ or contact Alex or Bruce. To use this network, you will need your University of Illinois NetID and password.
  • Printing: There are color and black and white printers dotted around the building. To start printing, we suggest you ask Alex and Bruce at the help desk to set you up on the printers that you want to use. 
  • NCSA Kerberos Username and Password: This is your NCSA username and password that allow you to access most of the NCSA resources. These include wikis, ticket systems and the internal website known as Savannah or MIS. You should receive this information from Amanda Thibault. If you do not get this, or lose of forget it, you can have if reset by asking Alex or Bruce in the Laptop Support office (Rm 4042). 
  • Telephone: NCSA uses the campus LYNC product which can be used via your laptop or mobile device and includes video and chat features. We are not providing physical telephones in the faculty cubicles or many of the shared office spaces. 

Snail Mail

  • There is a mail room on the ground floor (Rm 1006). Not entirely sure who gets a pigeon hole. You can also leave work related mail here to be sent out. (For your own mail, there is a mail boxes outside Beckman) 

Meetings and Workshop Planning

To reserve space for a meeting, contact your group’s office manager. If your group is not listed or you are not sure who to contact, please contact Laura Owen (lowen@illinois.edu) for assistance.

Reservable Meeting Room Spaces for Small Meetings

These rooms typically have a projectors, white board and a conference telephone. 

  • 2000 – Seats 15
  • 2004 – Seats 8
  • 2100 – Seats 20
  • 3004 – Seats 8
  • 3100 – Seats 20
  • 4004 – Seats 8

Reservable Meeting Room Spaces for Larger Meetings

  • 1030 – Seats around 45, typically laid out classroom style with desks each with microphones
  • 1040 – Seats around 45, typically laid out classroom style with desks 

Workshops, Conferences and Events

NCSA has superb event facilities on the ground floor, with an auditorium (Rm 1122) with seats 195, two training rooms, large executive conference room (Rm 1104), and an atrium equipped for receptions. Event services include projection, microphones, webcast and video capture, videoconferencing etc. If you are interested in hosting a workshop or conference that aligns with the NCSA mission, please contact Amanda Thibault or talk with your theme lead. Assuming the theme lead supports the activity and has sufficient funds available the use of NCSA facilities on the ground floor of NCSA can be made available at no charge. Please note that it is currently not easy to support meetings at weekends or holidays, or late evenings, so please discuss your ideas and plans as soon as possible to find out what might be possible. The webpage http://events.ncsa.illinois.edu, has pages describing the facilities, services, and underlying costs, but it requires a VPN if off campus and an NCSA email address. 

Mail Lists

Faculty are given an email address through NCSA that is automatically forwarded to your regular campus email. If you are not receiving NCSA emails, including the weekly NCSA newsletter “Bytes and Pieces”, please contact Amanda Thibault.

  • all-ncsa: This low traffic lists provides the entire NCSA community with weekly news (Bytes and Pieces newsletter) or important information from the director's office. You will automatically be added to this list (all NCSA full time staff, affiliate faculty and staff, students, postdocs, and in-house sponsored guests are included).
  • Faculty, Postdoc, and Student lists: A faculty email list (faculty@ncsa.illinois.edu) has been established for news and discussion. Faculty are encouraged to utilize this communication tool for information sharing within the Center faculty community. For other communications, there is also a postdoc mailing list (postdoc@ncsa.illinois.edu) and a student mailing list (student@ncsa.illinois.edu). Depending on whether you are a faculty, postdoc or student you will be automatically added to the relevant list. These are set up at the moment so that anyone on the list can post to the list, if this leads to too many mails we will make them moderated. 
  • General lists: A software mailing list (software@ncsa.illinois.edu)  is used for news and discussion around software development and activities at NCSA. 
  • Coming Soon: Theme Area lists

NCSA’s Security Strategy

This document provides staff with tools and education concerning security policy and procedures. Relying on individuals to use these tools to implement security appropriate to their work, NCSA supports a variety of computing systems, services and research projects for a nationwide group of academic and industrial users. It is the responsibility of every employee to protect its assets and those of its staff and clients.

You can go to the following site or an email reminder will be sent to you within your first week of hire to electronically validate the NCSA’s security document located at https://internal.ncsa.uiuc.edu.mis/securitydoc/.

Building Access 

 

Anyone with a 0% NCSA appointment, or who is a sponsored guest with building access, should automatically be able to access the NCSA building via their university ID card outside of business hours. If you or your students are in an office with swipe card access you should also have access anytime to these rooms. (Please check this!). Any office keys you need will be provided by NCSA facilities — as usual we need to get the keys back when you leave, and for that reason you will find that we prefer to try and use swipe card access for rooms for students, visitors etc.

 

Cyberinfrastructure Resources

Useful Stuff

Bear in mind, that we have a lot of things around the center that have been purchased by different people – Occulus rifts, 4K screens, high definition video cameras, large printers, etc. If you want to know who might have something you should ask around (e.g. ask Doug Fein, Bob Patterson, ...) 

Illinois Campus Cluster Nodes

NCSA is an investor in the Illinois Campus Cluster Program and currently holds sixteen nodes and three ten packs of disks. Specifically, the purchase was for:

  • Eight 64GB, 16 core nodes with Infiniband connection
  • Eight 64 GB, 20 core nodes with Infiniband connection with K40 GPUs
  • 90 TB of disk space which yields approximate 65 TB of useable space

These resources are available for appropriate NCSA staff and faculty use. To gain access you must first apply for an Illinois Campus Cluster Login at: https://campuscluster.illinois.edu/invest/user_form.html. Select “NCSA” as the primary queue. You will then be notified when your login has been created.

Gabrielle Allen (gallen@ncsa.illinois.edu) is the investor representative and Tim Boerner (tboerner@illinois.edu) is the operations manager.

The Illinois Campus Cluster Program webpage https://campuscluster.illinois.edu/ offers additional information for all experience levels. If you have any additional questions please contact the help desk at help@campuscluster.illinois.edu.

Innovative Systems Laboratory

NCSA’s Innovative Systems Laboratory (ISL) conducts research and development around mid- and long-term needs in core computing technology areas. ISL’s focus is on new systems or impact on existing systems using emerging processing, storage and interconnect technologies and novel computing environments. ISL provides support for evaluating and developing new technologies of interest to NCSA programs and projects and NCSA academic and industrial partners.

Resources include:

For more information or to collaborate, please contact Volodymyr Kindratenko (kindr@ncsa.illinois.edu) or visit http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/about/org/isl. 

Blue Waters

The NSF funded Blue Waters petascale supercomputer has a peak performance of over 13 petaflops, some 26 petabytes of disk storage, and up to 380 petabytes of tape storage. Although much of Blue Waters is allocated through an NSF review process, different mechanisms exists for Illinois faculty and researchers to take advantage of this resource. The different allocation mechanisms are described at https://bluewaters.ncsa.illinois.edu/illinois-allocations. Contact Jay Roloff for more information on Blue Waters allocations.

Ice House Long Term Data Storage

The NCSA Ice House facility provides reliable long-term storage for backups, archives, data needing mid to long term storage with only occasional access. The storage uses a disk cache to enhance data transfer performance and a tape library backend for reliable long term storage. Data can be deposited as a private archive or made available for others to download via Globus Data Sharing. Use cases suitable for this type of storage include research data that needs to be stored for future analysis, data that supports publications, backups or as a data replication site for existing services. Multiple classes of service are available on a consulting basis. WHO IS THE CONTACT FOR THIS?

Storage Condo 

The NCSA storage condo provides mid-level scalable storage from 10 terabytes to over a petabyte. The cost-recovery fee-for-service model starts at around $100/terabyte/year. Each project gets a private file system/s, access to data is via file system (NFS) or Globus. Additional services and access options are available via additional consulting fees. Use cases for this type of storage are hosting of large data sets, operational data storage and scratch space for analysis, mid-term data storage for archival needs. WHO IS THE CONTACT FOR THIS?

Communication and Social Media

To keep up to date with NCSA you should read the weekly Bytes and Pieces newsletter which is sent by email to the all-ncsa mail list, usually late in the day on Wednesday. Anyone without an NCSA affiliation can subscribe to a weekly news and events mail list which is the same news without the more internal items — see the NCSA Get Updates page at  http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/get_updates for how to subscribe. This page also links to our feeds on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Media Lab 

Information forthcoming

Research and Education Programs

The research and education directorate at NCSA coordinates the following programs and activities at NCSA. To find out any more about these programs please ask Amanda Thibault. 

  • 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. 
  • 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. 


Around NCSA

 

Snail mail room  Kitchen  

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