How Do We Measure Up? A Capabilities Model and Community Dataset for Research Computing and Data

Spring DRI Connect: Thursday, June 1 in Surrey, B.C.
Keynote speaker: Patrick Schmitz (Virtually delivered)
Across science, engineering, social sciences, and the humanities, every university depends upon research computing and data (RCD) professionals and infrastructure. The rapid evolution and diversification of RCD infrastructure, services, and support poses significant challenges to academic institutions as they try to effectively assess and plan for the growing needs of researchers. Many institutions would also like to assess their capabilities in comparison to peers. This talk will describe our experience with the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model, an assessment tool developed by the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) with support from the RCD Nexus, an NSF CI Center of Excellence Pilot. The model allows an organization to self-evaluate across a range of RCD services, and provides structured input to guide strategic planning, leveraging a defined and shared community vocabulary and enabling benchmarking relative to peer institutions. We’ll share our most recent findings from the Community Dataset which aggregates contributed assessment data to provide insights into the current state of support for RCD across the community, and describe how sub-communities and cohorts are using the model and the data to explore shared gaps and challenges as a basis for collaboration on shared solutions and strategies to advance RCD support.
Biography: Patrick Schmitz is Founder and Principal Consultant at Semper Cogito, providing strategic technology consulting in academic Research IT. Schmitz is an active contributor to a number of CaRCC working groups, co-chairs the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model and RCD Career Arcs working groups, and is co-PI for the RCD Nexus, an NSF CI Center of Excellence Pilot. Prior to this, he spent 12 years at UC Berkeley as Associate Director of Research IT for Architecture and Strategy, providing IT strategy and solutions in support of campus research; and Director of Berkeley Research Computing. In addition to his experience in academia, he was a researcher at Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and CWI in Amsterdam, and co-founded a series of tech startups.