SURA IT Program Summary for BoT – November 3, 2016
SURA IT Steering Group
Comprised of six members and a Chair, the SURA IT Steering Group (ITSG), selected by the IT Committee and approved by the Board of Trustees, provides the leadership function of the SURA IT Committee. The IT Committee Chair and three of the six ITSG members must be SURA Trustees. ITSG members serve three year terms. The current composition of the SURA IT Steering Group is:
· IT Committee Chair, Marc Hoit (Trustee), North Carolina State University
· Sara Graves (Trustee), University of Alabama in Huntsville
· Charles McMahon (Trustee), Tulane University
· Ramesh Kolluru (Trustee), University of Louisiana at Layfette
· Bliss Bailey (non-Trustee), Auburn University
· Brian Ensor (non-Trustee), George Washington University
· Ron Hutchins (non-Trustee), University of Virginia
Gary Crane, SURA IT Director and Don Riley, SURA Fellow and President’s Designee are appointed, non-voting members of the SURA IT Steering Group.
NSF Funded XSEDE Community Engagement and Enrichment Activities
The initial 5 year XSEDE award has ended and, on August 23, the National Science Foundation announced the award of the XSEDE renewal. SURA is a funded partner, leading the Broadening Participation Program (formerly the Under-Represented Community Engagement program). During the 5 years of the initial XSEDE award, under-represented minority and female users actively accessing XSEDE resources grew to over 4,000. In the new award, recruitment of new users will continue along with a focus on facilitating persistent engagement by under-represented minorities, women, and researchers that have not historically used advanced computing resources. Though the five year budget for the renewal was reduced and several original partners are not included in XSEDE2.0, SURA’s level of effort and budget were increased. The NSF press release announcing the XSEDE program renewal can be found at:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=189573&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
IT Community Activities
· The SURA Research Capabilities Database Project has completed the installation of VIVO (an open source software and ontology for creating institutional research discovery systems) at five SURA member schools. A project final report has been completed that summarizes the activities of the VIVO Install Project and offers conclusions and recommendations for three different communities; the SURA community and leadership, the VIVO Project, and future implementers of VIVO. This project resulted in the collaborative implementation of VIVO at 5 SURA institutions; George Washington University, Oklahoma University, University of Maryland at Baltimore County, Old Dominion University and Virginia Tech, and implemented a proof-of-concept federated search function search.sura.org that allows users to identify research capabilities at 10 SURA member schools. The full SURA VIVO Pilot Project Final Report is currently available at: http://tinyurl.com/he25v7f
· At the Fall 2015 Board of Trustees meeting SURA IT released the community developed “IT Incident Response Plan Template”. This template, developed in the NIMS (National Incident Management System) format, provides a starting point for developing and documenting response procedures to various information technology incidents that impact institutional operations, access, or security and allows easy integration into institutional All Hazards plans. This template has been downloaded from the SURA IT web pages (http://www6.sura.org/download/4830/) more than 240 times since its release.
· SURA IT completed its role in the NSF funded EarthCube Test Enterprise Governance project in July of 2016. SURA was a funded participant and provided oversight and guidance through its participation in the Earth Cube Trial Governance Operational Management Advisory Group. EarthCube is a NSF funded program aimed at transforming the conduct of research through the development of community-guided cyberinfrastructure to integrate information and data across the geosciences.