The mission of Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure governance is to enable Penn State to effectively deliver the full spectrum of computing and data services required for current and future directions in research. To do this, RCCI Governance has established faculty-led governance structures that are intended to be inclusive, forward-looking, and conducive to the substantive involvement of stakeholders (faculty, IT professionals, students, and administrators) in decisions concerning research cyberinfrastructure resources, facilities, and services. Research cyberinfrastructure is critical to all researchers at Penn State, from focused high-performance computing users to users in the “long-tail” of research who work on local systems and individual desktop/laptop computers.
Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure governance seeks to:
- Establish “faculty governance” of Research Computing
- Connect faculty and IT professionals at every level
- Establish go-to individuals in every local unit (College, Institute, etc.)
- Create clear channels of communication, bottom-up, top-down, and across the three IT domains (research, teaching, enterprise systems)
- Create a broadly inclusive central forum for discussion and advice
- Create a manageably small Executive Committee to advise the Chair and the VPR
- Establish clear relationships among the research computing entities at the Colleges and Institutes including the Institute for CyberScience (ICS)
- Establish clear relationships between ITS and research computing entities at the Colleges and ICS
- Put the VPR in charge of advocating for research computing and arguing for the funding research that computing needs in order to function
- Foster entrepreneurial activities