LSA Technology Services offers expert consulting, infrastructure, and community for digital teaching and research in the humanities, arts, and sciences. Our Research Computing Team enables this work with four distinct services: Digital Scholarship, Graphic Information Systems (GIS), High Performance Computing (HPC), and Research Software Programming. Below are some amazing projects the team has worked on recently.
The Digital Scholarship Studio
The Digital Scholarship Studio launched The First 100: 50 Years of Chicanas Changing History Digital Archive in October 2022 to coincide with the annual Western History Association Conference (WHA). The project was one of six Anti-Racist Digital Research Initiative (ARDRI) awardees and led by Dr. Lorena Chambers, a Postdoctoral Fellow in History and American Culture at U-M, and Dr. Margaret Salazar Porzio, Curator at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. The digital archive showcases 104 Mexican American women who hold a doctorate in history and how Chicana historians transform the way we understand history.
Operating throughout the 2022 calendar year, the ARDRI project pilot was a mini-grant program for nurturing early-stage digital scholarship projects that advance anti-racism and social justice in the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences. This program was a partnership with the U-M Library, LSA Technology Services, and the National Center for Institutional Diversity’s Anti-Racism Collaborative. ARDRI provides expertise, skills, and time, not just money.
Project Manager MJ Del Rosario described the impact of support from the digital scholarship team as, "We couldn't have done it without you all."
The combined effort of LSA Technology Services and the U-M Library offer the possibility of a snowball effect in funding for projects. For example, in addition to almost $10,000 coming from other funding sources (Institute for Research on Women & Gender, Center for the Education of Women +, Riecker Undergrad Research Grant), Dr. Chambers was able to acquire a further $190,000 in support from the Smithsonian by providing a description of the level of partnership they had with the technology service teams at U-M.
Caitlin Dickinson, from LSA Technology Services, and Matt Carruthers, from the U-M Library, provided expertise in developing data visualizations and mapping that debuted in San Antonio at the WHA. The research project team was continually impressed by their skills and Dr. Chambers described the reaction of panel attendees at the WHA as impactful, so much so that “attendees were moved to tears.” This is a shining example of how the work is more than just research; it can have an emotional effect on many people.
Dinosaur-killing Asteroid Models
LSA Technology Services’ members enable faculty research in diverse ways with projects spanning from digital humanities to hard science. The LSA Research Computing team, with expertise in high performance computing (HPC) and storage, were recently recognized for their support of The Chicxulub Impact Produced a Powerful Global Tsunami. The paper is by graduate student Molly Range, Earth and Environmental Sciences faculty member Brian Arbic (Oceanography), and Professor Emeritus Ted Moore. The project modeled the immediate impact of the dinosaur killing asteroid and confirmed the models with physical evidence. The study explicitly thanked LSA Technology Services staff Charles Antonelli, Mark Champe, and Michael Messina for help building and installing the software tools used by the research team to do the modeling and for supporting the transition to the new Great Lakes cluster. The Michigan News article, Dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered global tsunami that scoured seafloor thousands of miles from impact site, summarizes the findings.
Creating Repositories for Large Data Sets
The team is now collaborating with Brock Palen, U-M’s Director of Advanced Research Computing (ARC), in assisting Zack Spica, Henry Pollack Early Career Professor and Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Professor Spica is creating a central repository for the raw collected data from researchers using dark fiber to find seismic activity. This method is a novel approach to seismic detection with a small group around the world working on developing the science. The purpose of the repository is to share data so other researchers can develop this nascent science further. An LSA-funded repository has been set up and the large data sets are being uploaded and shared using Globus.
“You can compare data uploading and downloading using standard tools versus using Globus to traffic on a one lane freeway versus an eight lane freeway,” Research HPC/Storage Engineer Michael Messina explains. “Using SFTP or Cyberduck on local computers is opening one stream for all the data to flow. Using Globus on the endpoint servers for moving large amounts of data is opening thousands of streams for the data to flow.”
File System Integrations
Other work done within the HPC group with the Great Lakes cluster was an integration for Dr. Bjoern Penning’s lab to integrate Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire file system (CernVM-FS). Access to this file system would facilitate their participation in the LuxZeplin (LZ) dark matter experiment, a “next generation” experiment with about 250 scientists in 35 research labs around the globe.
Initial concern was raised by ARC about the underlying architecture of CernVM-FS and its security on the cluster. John Thiels, Research HPC/Storage Engineer at LSA Technology Services, worked with the lab and the HPC team to create a CernVM-FS instance through LSA Technology Services' OpenShift container service. This was then mounted on the cluster and gave the Penning lab rapid and reliable access to the CERN and LZ software stacks. After this project proved to be secure and reliable, the instance was transferred to ARC for permanent use on the cluster.
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