Rob Simmonds

University of Calgary

CV Highlights

• Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science

• BSc, University of Bath (1994), PhD, University of Bath (1999)

• Chief Technology Officer (CTO), WestGrid

• Co-Principal Investigator and Director of Research, Grid Research Centre (GRC)

• Research Interests: grid services, parallel simulation, network emulation

Automating Computational Research

As open standards for accessing computer, storage and sensor resources evolve and as implementations of these are more widely deployed, the opportunities for automating much of the end-to-end process of performing computational research increase. An aim is to move away from a world where large amounts of time are taken up determining the location to start a task on a resource, the best way to configure that task on that resource and the best strategies to employ to get a result in an appropriate timescale. By creating models of resources, policies, applications and user requirements, we can better match jobs to resources as well as configure tasks to most effectively use the available resources and meet researchers' requirements.

The GRC, led by Research Director Rob Simmonds, pursues research in many aspects of distributed HPC and networking. Its projects involve model-based monitoring of grid environments, scientific data handing, large-scale network emulation, and use of distributed operating systems in computational grids. Current collaborations include projects with HP Labs, Los Alamos National Lab, CANARIE and the University of Bath. WestGrid provides not only a testing ground for these grid services, it also benefits from the use of tools the GRC develops.