Organization of the SCINet project

The ARS Scientific Computing Initiative is led by an Executive Committee comprised of ARS leadership including Dr. Jeff Silverstein – Associate Administrator for National Programs, Dr. Brian Stucky – Acting Chief Scientific Information Officer, Rob Butler – Acting SCINet Project Manager, ARS scientists representing IT and security, and users of the HPC systems. SCINet committees report to the Executive Committee, including the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), an HPC Policy Committee, and an HPC Software Committee.

The program runs two high performance computer clusters and a storage unit. The Ceres cluster is housed at the National Animal Disease Center in Ames, IA and operated by Iowa State University. The Atlas cluster is located and ran by Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS, and the Juno storage unit is located at the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, MD.

User support at SCINet is provided by the Virtual Support Research Core (VSRC) operated by Iowas State University for Ceres, and by Mississippi State University for Atlas.

Senior Leadership

Executive Committee

SCINet Office

Scientific Advisory Committee

The ARS Scientific Computing Initiative is in the domain of ARS researchers, thus the program is in a constant state of gathering information to meet users’ needs. The SAC is an effort to assure that users have input on the ARS HPC-storage system. Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) members represent a broad range of scientific research at ARS, and membership includes two researchers from each of the five ARS geographic areas, a statistician, and an “at-large” member. The SAC divides its work over various subcommittees: communications, education, planning, and membership. In recent years, the SAC has assisted with a quarterly SCINet newsletter, designed a user needs survey, created the scinet.usda.gov website, and held multiple computational workshops and trainings. SAC progress and issues are elevated to the Executive Committee for review and approval. For more information, including how to participate (non-members welcome), please contact Adam Rivers (Chair).

Scientific Points of Contact

A SCINet Scientific Point of Contact (SPOC) is the SCINet champion for a location who works with the SCINet Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to ensure that location personnel are familiar with SCINet resources and services. SPOCs should be familiar with the scientific computing needs of the unit(s) at their location so that they can help keep the SAC and SCINet Office informed of those needs.

SCINet Policy Committee

Formed in 2020, this committee makes recommendations to the Executive Committee on policies and procedures relevant to HPC operations. The committee is comprised of members from various technical backgrounds, and includes representation from different ARS geographic areas. Membership also includes representatives from Iowa State University and Mississippi State University (where two of the ARS HPC systems are housed) in order to get representation and perspective of the issues that need to be addressed. For more information, including how to participate, please contact Jonathan Shao (chair).

SCINet Software Committee

The software committee evaluates requests by users to add or delete software to/from one of the HPCs. This committee is composed of scientific experts in the use of HPCs from across agricultural disciplines, and that represent our two HPCs. Users can make software requests by completing the Software Request Form.