Dear Dr. McKee:
It is my pleasure to write in support of the USATLAS Tier 2C data center proposal submitted by the ATLAS group at the University of Michigan. NCSA has a strong commitment to the development, dissemination and use of cyberinfrastructure. In particular, we believe that successful adoption of cyberinfrastructure requires community engagement, which means that technology providers, like NCSA and our partners, must have a deep understanding of how technology will be used by scientists and engineers – and of how to best support this use. The Tier 2C strategy embodies our beliefs about community engagement by utilizing a robust operational capacity in one domain (e.g., high energy physics) to demonstrate capabilities that might extend into other domains.
We anticipate that the experience of deploying and operating the Tier 2C center at Michigan will generate a number of important “lessons learned.” Specifically, as interest in computational and data grids grows, scientists and engineers outside of high energy physics should be placed in the best position to benefit from the experience of researchers in the ATLAS collaboration. NCSA has a number of resources that can be used to leverage Michigan’s experience with the Tier 2C center to ensure that these lessons are not lost – and that this important knowledge becomes available to those who need it. For example, NCSA is a pioneer in the use of the Access Grid to host national and international seminars and workshops that bring together researchers to learn about new technology. We are happy to work with the Michigan team to develop materials for Access Grid sessions to disseminate useful cyberinfrastructure practices and tools identified from the Tier 2C experience. In addition, NCSA would be pleased to help the Michigan team use the Alliance Center for Collaboration, Education, Science and Software (ACCESS) to host high-level meetings to bring together leaders from funding agencies and from disciplinary communities to think about how to generalize the Tier 2C experience. Finally, the wealth of contacts NCSA has with minority-serving institutions provides another way to help Michigan expand awareness of the Tier 2C experience.
To conclude, we are enthusiastic about Michigan’s Tier 2C proposal and we look forward to joining with the Michigan team in helping to tell the Tier 2C story – using the various venues NCSA has developed through years of high-performance computing education, outreach, and training.
Sincerely,
Rob Pennington, Acting Director, NCSA