The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis
Authors: Juan Jenny Li (National Science Foundation (NSF), Kean University), Amy Walton (National Science Foundation (NSF)), Katerina Antypas (National Science Foundation (NSF))
Abstract: The National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) supports developing and providing state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources, including HPC systems, tools, and services to advance science and engineering. The central vision of OAC is to support sustainable research workforce development by leveraging CI across domains. A particular focus now is on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into CI while utilizing CI for AI. We continue to facilitate innovation and innovative usage of CI+AI, democratized access, and the development of sustainable CI ecosystems. We seek to engage the community and institutions to obtain feedback on the evolving needs of the CI+AI workforce.
Long Description: The National Science Foundation's Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) Learning and Workforce Development (LWD) supports efforts to improve the adoption of cyberinfrastructure resources by the research community, integrating core literacy and skills in advanced cyberinfrastructure and adopting computational and data-driven methods into undergraduate and graduate education. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming part of CI and substantially relies on CI for success. At SC25, we seek ideas and individual feedback on OAC’s achievements and to address the evolving needs in the AI era for CI usage spanning many science and engineering domains. OAC LWD supports the development of an agile CI+AI research workforce ready to collaborate with science and engineering stakeholders across academia, government, industry, and other communities.
The goal of this BoF session is to facilitate a structured discussion that will bring to the forefront valuable input from the SC2025 community regarding research workforce development needs in the AI era. We welcome existing and past principal investigators (PIs), aspiring PIs, and others interested in national CI+AI workforce development to attend the BoF session. The OAC office director and/or deputy office director, and two program directors leading the NSF’s Learning and Workforce Development (LWD) and ACCESS/NAIRR programs will attend the BoF session. During the first 30 minutes, the program directors will summarize OAC’s recent achievements, followed by highlights of relevant programs by cognizant program directors. During the remaining 30 minutes, OAC directors will invite a dialogue between the participants and the program directors. The last half an hour will be dedicated to the group work of writing a summary report with the participation of the entire audience. In sum, we envision that the BoF session will create an opportunity for the program directors to interact directly with the SC2025 community and obtain individual feedback regarding programmatic development, to further advance the nation’s research workforce development in Cyberinfrastructure and Artificial Intelligence.
The interactive discussion will cover recent OAC achievements, and our broader programmatic goals related to education and workforce development, including but not limited to, NAIRR Pilot Classroom and Expansion, Training and educational needs, Broadening participation, Institutional recognition of Cyberinfrastructure Professionals (CIPs), and Networks and community-building efforts. All topics will focus on supporting research and education across the nationwide research community while gaining insights to refine the design of OAC programs.
Note that this proposed BoF is not duplicative of the overall OAC programs' BoF session proposed separately by OAC. We have found that the audience interested in cyberinfrastructure learning and workforce development (LWD) does not necessarily overlap with the audience for the overall OAC BoF; Many of the LWD programs are NSF- or CISE-wide and broader in their goals than the ones in the overall OAC BoF. LWD programs are also geared specifically to developing the human aspects of CI+AI, focusing on the PIs and the community, and the potential community that will be developed. This difference tends to elicit different types of conversations from the programs covered by the overall OAC BoF.
Website: https://www.nsf.gov/cise/oac