Birds of a Feather (BoF)
Managing and sharing large scientific data sets
Supercomputing Asia 2026 (SCA26)
Thursday January 29th 11:30am-12:30pm 12F Conference Hall
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Abstract:
Abstract:
This BoF sets out to look at the challenge of sharing large amounts of collected scientific data with a view to sharing techniques, methods and software used in order to address this challenge. It is to help attendees with the challenge of sharing large amounts of collected scientific data with sharing techniques, methods and software used in order to address this challenge. The goal is to understand contemporary practices and practical methods for sharing research data collections. This forsters better collaboration and understanding between research organisations with large data holdings that is analysed or used with HPC workflows and software.
Description:
Description:
The primary goal of this BoF is to understand contemporary practices and practical methods for sharing research data collections. It’s also to help build better collaboration and better understanding between research organisations who hold large amounts for data that is analysed or used with HPC workflows and software.
Topics included:
1. A review of what is being shared and how presently,
2. Data sizes and types (characterisation),
3. Who are the users, and where are they located,
4. How is user access managed,
5. Technologies utilized including software and data portal or other technologies such as Globus or Mediaflux
6. Challenges of contemporary technology - ie geographic distribution, the costs involved
7. Clever methods for solving issues.
8. Lessons learnt.
Session format will be consultative and interactive.
It is expected this BoF will include a few short sharp presentations as topic starters with questions from the audience, followed by an information sharing session managed via a panel of invited experts.
Interaction between the audience is guided by the program and interaction types including panel led discussion and presentations and questions of the presenters by the audience.
The relevance of this BoF to the expected HPC audience of SCA/HPC Asia is in the areas where large data sets (of structured and unstructured data) or new corpus or data collections are utilised by a number of research areas including but not limited to:
* Bioinformatics data bases and data sets,
* Radio Astronomy projects including precursor projects of the SKA. It’s also relevant to SKA and the regional centres,
* Climate models,
* Corpus including 1000 scientist AI Jam.
This BoF topic may deal with commercial technology.
Expected audience are hpc/data/storage architects, data managers and technologists and system operators and data custodians of research data systems.
Similar BoF’s on Research data collection systems design and implementation have been held before at SCA24 and eRsearch24 and the session at SC24 was over 62 attendees, the latter over 53 attendees.
The expected outcomes are:
1. Documented collection management strategies and examples for both national and international data collection sharing and what technologies were used and which challenges were overcome and by what means
2. A list of collaborators and published examples to share with attendees and in proceedings.
Special requirements and requests are that sufficient time window is provided, a method to take notes and record the proceedings is made available (ie spoken word capture, a submission site for review and sharing is put up.
It is preferred that this BoF is held at the start of the conference rather than at the end as numbers tend to diminish if held at the end of the conference or on the day after the main stream is completed.
Program:
Can be found at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WU00mtM6ugKjJB-14HocblPHkipD83uyQWtEhqFbTh4/edit?usp=sharing
Panelists:
If you have been sent an email to this page, you are cordially invited to participate on the panel for this BoF.
Please acknowledge your acceptance and if you can make the BoF times and days as currently listed on the program (we hope this is be fined down shortly).
A very short presentation
Please prepare a one or two slide pptx presentation containing your personal Introduction/Bio, and then a summary of key points you would like to address that you think are important to this BoF. Provide this by the 20th January 2026 23:59 AOE to chris.schlipalius@pawsey.org.au Example presentations can be shared if you require.
Time is of the essence for this large panel with time to cover as much of this broad area as we are able to - we have a large contingent of invited panelists so brevity and your main points in summary are important.
Please let Chris know additionally if you'd like to speak/present on a short targeted pertinent topic on these items for this BoF to stimulate conversation at the start of the BoF and provide to Chris an outline of your presentation for consideration please.
Confirmed Distinguished Panelists (as of the 19th January 2026) are:
Bronis R. de Supinski - CTO for Livermore Computing (LC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
Michael Hennecke - Distinguished Technologist at HPE – DAOS Systems/Software Engineering
Chris Maestas - IBM CTO for Data and AI Storage Solutions
Bruce Gilpin - CEO Versity Software
Robert Mollard - Arcitecta Global Business Development Lead
Matt Star - Spectralogic - CTO, VP APJ Sales, VP Federal Sales
Dr Werner Scholz - Xenon Systems CTO and Head of R&D
CJ Newburn - NVIDIA Architect - IO and HPC software strategy
Jake Carroll - Director, Research Computing Centre - University of Queensland
Session Leader Information
Session Leader 1.
Name: Christopher Schlipalius
Company/Institution: Pawsey Supercomputing Centre
2nd Company/Institution: CSIRO
Country: Australia
Biography:
Chris is an experienced technical Usergroups and Conference Committee member and presenter. In his role as Storage Manager, he has over 27 years of experience working and managing servers, block storage, SANs, LTO and enterprise tape, backups, HSM and POSIX filesystems (OneFS, GPFS, ZFS, ScoutFS) for very large enterprise and research data holdings at The Curtin University of Technology and at The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.
He is a member of the SC25 Technical Program Committee and SCA26 Committee.
Will this person be one of the speakers at this BoF at the conference? Yes
Is this person on the Birds of a Feather reviewing committee? Yes
Session Leader 2.
Name: Daniel Rodwell
Company/Institution: NCI
2nd Company/Institution: ANU
Country: Australia
Biography:
Daniel Rodwell is the Associate Director of Storage Services at NCI Australia. The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) facility in Canberra is home to one of the largest and fastest research focussed High-Performance Computing and Data systems in the Southern Hemisphere.
Will this person be one of the speakers at this BoF at the conference? Yes
Is this person on the Birds of a Feather reviewing committee? No
BoF Topic Area
BoF Topic Area: Supercomputers
Networks & Memory & Storage
System Operation
Research Data
The day and time for the BoF is January 29th 11:30am-12:30pm.
Description:
Description:
The primary goal of this BoF is to understand contemporary practices and practical methods for sharing research data collections. It’s also to help build better collaboration and better understanding between research organisations who hold large amounts for data that is analysed or used with HPC workflows and software.
Topics included:
1. A review of what is being shared and how presently,
2. Data sizes and types (characterisation),
3. Who are the users, and where are they located,
4. How is user access managed,
5. Technologies utilized including software and data portal or other technologies such as Globus or Mediaflux
6. Challenges of contemporary technology - ie geographic distribution, the costs involved
7. Clever methods for solving issues.
8. Lessons learnt.
Session format will be consultative and interactive.
It is expected this BoF will include a few short sharp presentations as topic starters with questions from the audience, followed by an information sharing session managed via a panel of invited experts.
Interaction between the audience is guided by the program and interaction types including panel led discussion and presentations and questions of the presenters by the audience.
The relevance of this BoF to the expected HPC audience of SCA/HPC Asia is in the areas where large data sets (of structured and unstructured data) or new corpus or data collections are utilised by a number of research areas including but not limited to:
* Bioinformatics data bases and data sets,
* Radio Astronomy projects including precursor projects of the SKA. It’s also relevant to SKA and the regional centres,
* Climate models,
* Corpus including 1000 scientist AI Jam.
This BoF topic may deal with commercial technology.
Expected audience are hpc/data/storage architects, data managers and technologists and system operators and data custodians of research data systems.
Similar BoF’s on Research data collection systems design and implementation have been held before at SCA24 and eRsearch24 and the session at SC24 was over 62 attendees, the latter over 53 attendees.
The expected outcomes are:
1. Documented collection management strategies and examples for both national and international data collection sharing and what technologies were used and which challenges were overcome and by what means
2. A list of collaborators and published examples to share with attendees and in proceedings.
Special requirements and requests are that sufficient time window is provided, a method to take notes and record the proceedings is made available (ie spoken word capture, a submission site for review and sharing is put up.
It is preferred that this BoF is held at the start of the conference rather than at the end as numbers tend to diminish if held at the end of the conference or on the day after the main stream is completed.
Session materials and proceedings:
Session materials and proceedings:
The audio recording is being processed but the slides and other mateial will be shared here.
Discussion papers for Panelists https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wUVVgcpwWmmGUOzJTv2wmGeCsVp81Le0?usp=sharing
Presentations https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1q4lgYgDyjgMf5QY4tVVFNC6cUQkou20-?usp=drive_link
Programme https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bSOLPzVXcRIq-2eZHpqnYWTTwpGBD22p?usp=drive_link
Three questions for the panelists: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iRmtHt6fqoqxd55dWkJXTI7m61PE6M8a/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=105193191776997430627&rtpof=true&sd=true
Some images from the event:
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