ORCD Newsletter: September 14, 2023

Dear ORCD Community,

Welcome back for Fall at MIT. I hope you have all had a great summer and have rested for what promises to be an eventful Fall.

At ORCD, we have made several important staffing changes. Michel Erb has joined us from Novartis as our Director of Platforms, Infrastructure, and Data Services, taking charge of our GetWell plan for Engaging. Dr. Shaohao Chen, formerly of the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department, has also joined ORCD full time, and is initially tasked with integrating the Open Mind cluster as a Computational Support Specialist. Renée Hellenbrecht comes to us from the MIT Libraries as the new ORCD Program Administrator, taming MIT’s administrative miasma. Finally, Chris Hill, Director of the Research Computing Project and Research Scientist from Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, is now our Director of Scientific Consulting. Chris has been at the center of all things ORCD since the start, and we are excited to have formalized his role.

These remarkable people join James, Lauren, Paul, and I, along with our TechSquare team, to fulfill our mission to bring computing to the MIT research community.

We will return to a bi-weekly newsletter, bringing you more details about our new team members, our developing ORCD vision of research computing, and idiosyncratic news from science and other parts of academia.

Welcome to our new students, faculty, and staff, and welcome back to everyone else.

Peter

 

Above the Fold

  • Open Data Prize: from Chris Bourg (Director of the MIT Libraries) We are now seeking nominations for the 2023 MIT Prize for Open Data. Nominations are due September 15 at 5pm. Information here.
  • High Performance Extreme Computing (HPEC) Virtual Conference: Monday Sept. 25, 2023, 9 am - 6 pm. Information here.

What We’re Reading

Photo of classroom 26-100 with boards full of writing

Picture of the Month

26-100 after the first day of classes