Peter Tieleman, WestGrid executive member and Biological Sciences professor, was included in the 2010 edition of Canadian Who’s Who reference guide. The Canadian Who’s Who is a comprehensive source of biographical information on leading and influential Canadians. Dr. Tieleman’s research at the University of Calgary utilizes computer-modeling technology to focus on molecular biophysics of cells and the possible applications for treating diseases such as Alzheimer’s. A brief biography of Dr. Tieleman was included in the annual guide published by the Toronto University Press.

For more information about Peter Tieleman's research, please click here.

Please be advised that the WestGrid website upgrade to Drupal version 6 has been completed.

Those accessing the WestGrid Intranet will notice a change in format. If you notice any issues as a result of the upgrade, please contact webmaster@westgrid.ca.

The deadline for voting for ideas in the Digital Economy consultation process has been extended.

Please submit your vote by Monday, July 12, 2010.

More information and voting instructions can be found here. Compute Canada's idea titled "To Compete you must Compute" can be found here.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Industry Canada has launched a consultation process in order to develop a strategy for the digital economy. The details can be found here. The site encourages submissions in response to the questions and issues raised by the government's consultation paper and a number of submissions are already available on the web site. The site encourages participation and, in particular, encourages you to vote for or against particular ideas located in the “Idea Forum” sections.

Voting will take only 5 minutes of your time and is an opportunity to raise awareness of HPC dramatically with the government and other visitors to this site. 

Compute Canada has submitted an idea titled “To Compete You Must Compute” that describes the value and necessity of HPC to the digital economy. If the future of HPC in Canada is important to you - as a researcher, university staff member, student, or postdoc - PLEASE VOTE. ** Voting closes today (July 8). **

HOW TO VOTE

In order to vote, you must register on the Digital Economy website, however the process is simple and will only take a few minutes.

1. Click here.
2. Click the "Log in" link along the left hand side underneath "Home"
3. Click register to get an account. The standard email confirmation process then occurs.
4. After you have a confirmed account, log in.
5. Go to < http://de-en.gc.ca/2010/07/08/to-compete-you-must-compute/>  (Compute Canada's idea submission - "To Compete You Must Compute", located in the Digital Infrastructure category of the Idea Forum)
6. Read and Vote. Or just vote a thumbs up.
7. Leave comments if you wish.
8. Pass this voting invite along to colleagues.

The WestGrid email issue has now been resolved. Our apologies for any inconvenience the email outage may have caused as a result of the email system security change.

All emails sent during the affected period (June 28 - June 29) should have been held and do not need to be resent. We appreciate your patience as we work to respond to the many messages that were received during the past week by the WestGrid Support and Accounts teams. If you have not yet received a response and you'd like to follow up, please feel free to contact info@westgrid.ca.

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Updated 2010-07-06.

 

WestGrid is currently experiencing problems sending and receiving emails to the following email addresses:

• info@westgrid.ca
• support@westgrid.ca
• accounts@westgrid.ca
• kowalchuk@westgrid.ca

Our apologies if you have been trying to send to any of these addresses. We thank you for your patience as we work to resolve the problem. For any urgent matters, please email Lindsay Sill at lindsay.sill@cybera.ca.

As part of our annual reporting requirements to funding agencies, we need you to answer a few quick questions related to your use of CFI-funded infrastructure for your specific research project. The information is required by our primary funder, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and it is important that we report to them as completely and accurately as possible.

Researchers are required to report on project development annually as a condition of continued access to Compute Canada resources. You should have received an email on June 2, 2010 if you used a Compute Canada - WestGrid system in the period April 1, 2009 - March 31, 2010. It is mandatory that at least one person in your research group completes this survey, but more than one reply will be accepted. If you did not receive an email but used a Compute Canada - WestGrid system from April 1, 2009 - March 31, 2010, we invite you to complete the survey by clicking the link provided below.

The survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the survey please contact Lindsay Sill. Please complete the survey by Wednesday, June 16, 2010.

The survey is available in both French and English:
English: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RRWWQ9P
French:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VFHLQSX

Thank you in advance for your participation!

Two of WestGrid’s computing nodes on Checkers were used last week by humanities researchers at the workshop “Mind the Gap: Bridging HPC and the Humanities," which took place May 10-14 at the University of Alberta. Over 20 graduate students, post doctorate fellows, and programmers took part in six research projects, covering a wide variety of issues that were best addressed using high performance computing (HPC).

“Participants found this workshop significant because it involved actually doing rather than just talking,” says Geoffrey Rockwell, workshop organizer and professor of Philosophy and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta. “There have been a number of events discussing opportunities for HPC and the humanities, but this was the first (for us) where we had the support to build prototypes and run them on the system.”

The projects covered a diverse range of topics aimed at solving various research practice challenges. One such project investigated how to link longitudinal census data so that people could be traced regardless of changes in name or location. Another project experimented with indexing and cloud computing to make analytics more efficient on the web. A third sought to enable researchers to sort through electronic databases with greater efficiency, saving time and energy in word-based searches.

This workshop was the first step of a seed project aimed at facilitating the advancement of a common research agenda for Humanities researchers across Canada, as well as to spark dialogue between researchers in the Humanities and researchers and staff associated with HPC at the University of Alberta.

“Everyone seemed to feel that this was a good paradigm for such workshops,” says Rockwell. “Some of the projects got quite far demonstrating that there are real problems in the humanities that can benefit from HPC and which use significant resources."

More information about the Mind the Gap workshop is available here. To read a blog post from one of the workshop attendees, click here. To see photos of the event, click here.

WestGrid is seeking is seeking a full-time Director of Operations to support the expanded operations of the consortium across BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The DO will act in direct support of the WestGrid CTO with particular attention to coordinating and supporting the site team leaders (Site Leads) at the institutions involved.

Primary responsibilites include:

• Coordination and project management for the WestGrid operations staff. This includes ensuring that appropriate project management tools and procedures are in place and used effectively. It also includes ensuring that all WestGrid systems and services are correctly maintained.
• In conjunction with the CTO, works with network providers to maintain WestGrid's network deployment.
• Provide consulting support as appropriate to ensure that the WestGrid community of researchers obtains optimal value from the Grid computing environment and other tools provided.
• Ensure that appropriate documentation and consulting resources are in place to allow the WestGrid community to make effective use of the installed services. 
• Provide support to the Collaborative Visualization teams, particularly the Collab/Viz Coordinator.

To download the complete job description, please click here.

Interested parties are asked to forward one PDF including cover letter and resume electronically, no later than June 11, 2010 to:
Jill Kowalchuk, Executive Director, WestGrid
info@westgrid.ca

This position will remain open until a suitable candidate has been appointed.

Jill Kowalchuk (ED, WestGrid) moderating the Compute Canada Town Hall, May 6, 2010, Vancouver, BC.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Compute Canada Town Halls.

Over 80 participants were in attendance from 9 sites across Western Canada for the Town Hall meeting held at UBC last week in Vancouver. The feedback collected will be beneficial in shaping the national HPC landscaping for the completion of NPF-1 and for the purpose of planning NPF-2.

Stayed tuned to the Compute Canada website for updates, including a summary of the meetings.

If you would like to provide feedback on the Town Hall, please email info@westgrid.ca. For all technical inquiries, please contact support@westgrid.ca.