San Diego Supercomputer Center Partners with Research Data Alliance for Plenary

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Industry leaders and data professionals from throughout the world will convene March 8-11 in San Diego for the Research Data Alliance’s (RDA) Fifth Plenary Meeting to discuss ways to foster an open environment of data sharing and exchange.

Francine Berman, RDA/US Chair and former SDSC Director. Photo by Alan Decker

Celebrating its second year as an international organization, RDA will focus on its accomplishments during this meeting and help ensure their lasting impact in the research data sharing community through adoption by other organizations.

With the theme “Adopt a Deliverable”, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, will partner with RDA/United States (RDA/US) to host “Adoption Day,” scheduled to occur the first day of the meeting. To be held on the UC San Diego campus, the event will focus on RDA’s recently published deliverables – products and recommendations developed by the alliance to remove barriers related to the sharing of data among researchers.

The RDA is an international organization formed in 2013 through funding from the National Science Foundation, the European Commission, and the Australian government, with a common mission to reduce those barriers while accelerating data-driven innovation worldwide. RDA’s U.S. involvement is led by Dr. Francine Berman, Chair of RDA/US, who also served as SDSC’s director from 2001 to 2009.

Attendees at the RDA/SDSC “Adoption Day” event will have the opportunity to hear from numerous organizations from the U.S. and Europe that have adopted RDA’s deliverables. From the U.S., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Deep Carbon Observatory, Kent University, and Washington University St. Louis will present their adoption activities. European Collaborative Data Infrastructure (EUDAT), Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN), and the German Climate Computing Center will represent the European region and present their approaches to adopting RDA’s outputs.

Additional activities will feature presentations from speakers throughout the world discussing their accomplishments related to large data facilities and/or projects, plus a guided tour of the SDSC facility.

“We are delighted to partner with SDSC to support data sharing and infrastructure development,” said Berman. “SDSC’s focus on enabling cyberinfrastructure and RDA’s focus on the development and use of data sharing infrastructure are well aligned, and we expect RDA’s Adoption Day at SDSC to be a great event.”

“SDSC is pleased to host Adoption Day – it is fitting since so much of SDSC’s reputation in data is due to Fran Berman’s leadership while she was at the helm of SDSC,” said SDSC Director Michael Norman. “During my tenure as SDSC director I have witnessed how important data sharing is in driving the scientific discovery process, and RDA’s tools and standards are making that easier.”

Activities planned for the March 9-11 Plenary, to take place at the Paradise Point Hotel in San Diego, include a combination of breakout sessions and plenaries focused on topics including but not limited to big data, data fabric, interoperability, data stewardship, and metadata standards.

Keynote speakers include Margaret Leinen, Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences, Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the UC San Diego; Stephen Friend, President, Co-founder, and Director of Sage Bionetworks; and Naoyuki Tsunematsu, Principal Adviser, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan.

For more information on RDA, the “Adoption Day” event, and/or the upcoming Plenary Meeting, please visit http://rd-alliance.org.