Discussion on Large Data Management in the Cloud

Dear Colleagues,

We write to personally encourage you to participate in an important discussion on the topic of large data management in the cloud, with a focus on research needs. The one-day, face-to-face event is co-sponsored by Internet 2 and Microsoft, and will be held at UC Davis on Thursday, July 26th.

The curation and management of large data has become one of the largest technology challenges facing universities. While the pace of innovation of cloud services is high, a coordinated and affordable strategy to meet the needs of university researchers has yet to emerge. The discussion we plan to have at UC Davis will focus on ways we can make measurable progress in demonstrating need and innovative use of cloud technologies to manage large data for university research. The event will result in a series of pilot projects that will focus in the first phase on the area of genomics and “Bio IT” more broadly, using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service. UC Davis will serve as the host for this discussion, with leaders from Internet2 and Microsoft Research participating as key partners in the discussion and subsequent projects. We encourage you to attend and suggest other members of he academic community who may be interested in this discussion. (See the draft agenda for the event and background information below and attached.)
To join us, we ask that you please follow these two steps:

  • Let us know if you will be participating in person or via video-conference – RSVP by replying to this message by Friday, July 20th at 12 p.m. PST
  • Complete your hotel reservation, should you need one, by Friday, July 13. We have made arrangements for a group discount for two nights (07/25-07/26) under the event name of “Large Data Management Conference.” Please contact Maria at the Aggie Inn directly at (530) 753-7100, ext 113. Discounted rates range from $95-$119/night. For more information, see http://www.aggieinn.com/ .

We will work with you to establish a video conference link to your location, and will be available to answer any questions as you prepare for the event. If you would like to discuss the meeting in person, please
contact Gabe Youtsey, Assistant CIO at UC Davis, at (530) 752-0701 or gdyoutsey@ucdavis.edu .

We look forward to your participation in this event,

Sincerely,

Richard Michelmore
Professor, Molecular and Cellular Biology
And Director, UC Davis Genome Center

Peter M. Siegel
Campus CIO
And Vice Provost, Information and Educational Technology
University of California, Davis

Full Schedule

Time Section Notes
9:00am – 9:15 Welcome & Introductions Pete Segel and Richard Michelmore
9:15 – 9:30 Objectives Khalil Yazdi
9:30 – 10:30 Opening Remarks
  1. Todd Needham
  2. Steve Wolff
  3. Gabriel Youtsey & Dawei Lin
  4. Adrian Wilson & Khalil Yazdi
10:30 – 12:00 Diving Deep into the Technical Challenges Research needs and perspectives
12:00 – 1:00pm Lunch
1:00 – 1:45 Distilling the Technical & Research Issues
  1. Technical support issues
  2. Describing success factors
1:45 – 2:45 Developing a Consensus Agreement on Projects
  1. Identifying 3-5 research projects
  2. Identifying requisite tech support
  3. Identifying project timelines and participation
2:45 – 3:00 Break
3:00 – 3:45 Discussion of Expectations of Participants Internet2 , Universities, Microsoft
3:45 – 4:30 Next Steps
Dawei Lin by  :  Email Dawei Lin

Dr. Dawei Lin received his PhD from Peking University, China in Computational and Structural Biology. He started his career at the Protein Data Bank (PDB) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a worldwide repository for macromolecular structures. He is currently the Bioinformatics Core Director at the UC Davis Genome Center. In his current position, he is leading his team to provide expertise and infrastructure to carry out acquisition curation, and distribution of complex data sets as well as to develop and perform computations, analyses and simulations addressing a wide variety of biological questions from genomics to network biology.