GPN 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting: Full Schedule

9:00am CDT

Sponsors Office Hours

The Sponsors Office Hours session is designed to provide attendees with an opportunity to connect with each of our sponsors in a breakout session. We have representatives from our three sponsors who will be present in individual breakout sessions. Attendees can join in with any of the breakout sessions to meet with a sponsor, and they are free to move from one breakout session to another at any time in order to meet with more than one sponsor. See the breakout session schedule for this time to see which sponsors are assigned to which breakout session. If you miss connecting with a sponsor, see the conference website under the Sponsors tab to get contact information for all of the sponsors.

Thursday June 3, 2021 9:00am - 10:00am CDT
.Main Room

Sponsors Office Hours

10:00am CDT

Opening Welcome

This is the Opening Session and Welcome for the main conference portion of the GPN 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting. We start this session with a greeting from James Deaton, Executive Director of the Great Plains Network, and information on the virtual meeting. He will recognize our sponsors and provide information on the Sponsors Office Hours that take place on Thursday and Friday of the meeting. James will also provide brief instructions on how to navigate between the Main Room and the Breakout Session Rooms and about the use of Sched to organize and manage your conference schedule.

Speakers

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

The Great Plains Network (GPN) is a non-profit consortium aggregating networks through GigaPoP connections while advocating research on behalf of universities and community innovators across the Midwest and Great Plains who seek collaboration, cyberinfrastructure and support for big... Read More →

Thursday June 3, 2021 10:00am - 10:15am CDT
.Main Room

Session

10:15am CDT

State of the States Research Panel

Research computing directors across the region will present information on the state of their research cyberinfrastructure.

Moderators

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Speakers

Mark Bookout

Director, IT Research Support Solutions, Missouri S&T

Henry Neeman

Director, OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER), University of Oklahoma

Henry Neeman is founding Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER), Executive Director of Research Computing, Associate Professor of Engineering, and Adjunct Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma (OU). He received his... Read More →

Kevin Brandt

Assistant Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure, South Dakota State University

David Chaffin

Assistant Professor and Director AHPCC, University of Arkansas

Pratul Agarwal

Assistant Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure, Oklahoma State University

Dr. Pratul Agarwal is the Assistant Vice President of Research for Cyber-Infrastructure and is also the Director of High Performance Computing Center at OSU. He has over 15 years of experience in high performance computing and scientific research. He previously held positions at University... Read More →

Ryan Johnson

Director of Research Computing, University of South Dakota

Riley Epperson

IT Associate Director, University of Kansas

Riley Epperson has been with the University of Kansas since 2012. He has experience in Petabyte scale storage systems, high-throughput networking, high performance clusters, and enterprise class data centers.

Hongfeng Yu

Interim Director, Holland Computing Center; Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Hongfeng Yu is an associate professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Currently, he also serves as the interim director of Holland Computing Center. He received his B.S. degree and M.S. degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University... Read More →

2021 GPN Annual Meeting Research Panel USD Slides pptx

Kansas SoS GPN2020 2021 pptx

Thursday June 3, 2021 10:15am - 11:15am CDT
.Main Room

Session, Panel

11:15am CDT

Sponsors Lightning Talks

During this session, each of the conference's sponsors are offered an opportunity to give a ten-minute lightning talk, which can be on any topic that they wish to share with the GPN audience.

Telia Carrier:

Cisco Systems: "Routed Optical Networking - RON"

Juniper Networks:

Moderators

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Cisco RON 10 minutes FINAL pdf

Thursday June 3, 2021 11:15am - 12:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Lightning Talk

12:00pm CDT

Mid-Day Break

During the mid-day break, attendees are welcome to gather in the Main Room for informal discussion with other attendees. Bring your lunch and eat while chatting with your colleagues from the Great Plains Network.

Thursday June 3, 2021 12:00pm - 12:45pm CDT
.Main Room

Break

12:45pm CDT

State of the State Networks Panel

A feature of every GPN Annual Meeting is the State of the State Networks Panel during which representatives from each of the state networks that make up the Great Plains Network give a brief presentation on the activities, plans, or other topics of interest regarding their networks and members. This is a great time to see what all kinds of new and interesting things are going on within our region and in the individual states.

Moderators

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Speakers

Cort Buffington

Executive Director, KanREN

Custom World-Class Services & SupportKanREN is a perfect example of a successful public-private partnership as we leverage relationships with service providers to build fiber optic infrastructure for our members. KanREN purchases raw connectivity building blocks, converting those... Read More →

Andrew Buker

Assistant Vice President, Infrastructure Services, University of Nebraska

Andrew Buker is the Assistant Vice President for Infrastructure Services in the office of Information Technology Services at the University of Nebraska. He provides leadership in support of systems, networks, telecommunications, and data centers. His teams also partner closely with... Read More →

Paul Kern

Chief Information Security Officer, South Dakota Board of Regents

Paul is an information security professional with over twenty years’ experience in IT. Since 1995, Paul has worked in the telecommunications and financial industries as well as in secondary and post-secondary education.

Scott Ramoly

Chief Technology Officer, Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network

Chief Technology Officer – ARE-ON Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network

John Hennessey

Executive Director & Higher Education CIO, OneNet

Hank Niederhelm

Director of Infrastructure, MOREnet

Hank has the been Director of Infrastructure since 2005. His areas of responsibility include Network Services, Systems Administration, and Development.

Steve Schallehn

Sr. Network Engineer, Iowa State University

OneNet GPN State of the State Networks 2021 pptx

MOREnet GPN State of the State 2021 pdf

Thursday June 3, 2021 12:45pm - 1:45pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Panel

1:45pm CDT

Break

During the break attendees are invited to gather in the Main Room for informal discussion with other attendees. Get a cup of coffee or tea and chat with your colleagues from the Great Plains Network.

Thursday June 3, 2021 1:45pm - 2:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Break

2:45pm CDT

Day 1 Wrap-up

James Deaton will review the day's activities and highlight sessions coming on Day 3 of the GPN Annual Meeting. He will also invite attendees to join in at 9:00 AM on Friday for the Sponsors Office Hours during which attendees can meet with three more of the sponsors of the conference. We will also be announcing the winners of the daily photo contest and the most popular Lightning Strike comment posted on the GPN Slack channel.

Speakers

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Thursday June 3, 2021 2:45pm - 3:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Session

3:00pm CDT

NSF CC* BoF

This is an open-ended Birds of a Feather (BoF) session designed for anyone from a GPN state network or member university who is considering, submitting, or has been awarded a proposal to the NSF Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) Program. CC* invests in coordinated campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects. The program's requirements are science-driven and comprise the primary motivation for any proposed activity. Learning and workforce development (LWD) in cyberinfrastructure are explicitly addressed in the program.

Moderators

Jennifer Schopf

Director, International Networks; Director, Engagement and Performance Operations Center, Indiana University

Speakers

Hans Addleman

Senior Architect for IN@IU/EPOC, Indiana University, International Networks

Thursday June 3, 2021 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Birds of a Feather (BoF) Session

10:00am CDT

Welcome Day 2

This is a short welcoming session for Day Two of the general conference. James Deaton will provide a brief summary of the day’s events. Don’t forget to participate in the photo contest and to post a Lightning Strike, which is a notable or favorite comment heard during the day, on the meeting’s Slack channel

Speakers

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Friday June 4, 2021 10:00am - 10:15am CDT
.Main Room

Session

10:15am CDT

GP CyberTeam, Women in HPC, & GP-ARGO

In the past two years, universities across the region have collaborated on new projects supporting research cyberinfrastructure. In July of 2019, an NSF proposal led by the University of Missouri and including the research computing directors across five states resulted in the creation of the Great Plains CyberTeam.

One year later, in July of 2020 under the leadership of Kansas State University, even more universities came together with another NSF proposal titled Great Plains Augmented Regional Gateway to the Open Science Grid (GP-ARGO). Its goal is to expand the computing capabilities across the region and to help participating universities contribute to the Open Science Grid, a national pool of research computing resources.

Most recently as we entered 2021, a new Women in HPC chapter was created and began a series of engaging speakers and open discussions.

Leaders within each of these initiatives will provide updates and answer questions from the community.

Speakers

Natasha Pavlovikj

Graduate Research Assistant, Holland Computing Center & Nebraska Food for Health Center, University of Nebraska at Lincoln

Daniel Andresen

Professor, Computer Science, Kansas State University

Grant Scott

Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Missouri

Christina Roberts

University of Missouri

Friday June 4, 2021 10:15am - 11:15am CDT
.Main Room

Session, Panel

11:15am CDT

Break

During the break attendees are invited to connect into the Main Room for information discussion with other attendees. Get a cup of coffee or tea and chat with your colleagues from the Great Plains Network.

Friday June 4, 2021 11:15am - 11:30am CDT
.Main Room

Break

12:15pm CDT

Mid-Day Break

During the mid-day break attendees are invited to connect to the Main Room for information discussion with other attendees. Bring your lunch and eat while you chat with your colleagues from the Great Plains Network.

Friday June 4, 2021 12:15pm - 1:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Break

1:00pm CDT

Intra-State Collaboration Panel

This is a panel discussion with representatives from the research community within the Great Plains Network about current and planned collaborative efforts between institutions across the GPN region.

Moderators

Jeremy Evert

Associate Professor, Computer Science, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Computer Science Education, High Performance Computing Education, Research Outreach at a small teaching university

Speakers

Don DuRousseau

Director of Reseach Computing, University of Arkansas

Don DuRousseau is the Director of Research Computing at the University of Arkansas Fayetteville. He has more than 25 years of scientific research and development experience in signal processing, data informatics, cyberinfrastructure and cybersecurity. He was responsible for operation... Read More →

Paul Kern

Chief Information Security Officer, South Dakota Board of Regents

Daniel Andresen

Professor, Computer Science, Kansas State University

Marcus Bond

Professor, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Southeast Missouri State University

Henry Neeman

Director, OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER), University of Oklahoma

Friday June 4, 2021 1:00pm - 2:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Panel

2:00pm CDT

Break

During the break attendees are invited to connect into the Main Room for informal discussion with other attendees. Get a cup of coffee or tea and chat with your colleagues from the Great Plains Network.

Friday June 4, 2021 2:00pm - 2:15pm CDT
.Main Room

Break

2:15pm CDT

Attendee Lightning Talks

Member lightning talks are brief five-minute presentations that any attendee at the conference can volunteer to make. Topics can range from technical to personal where the presenter can provide insights into something he or she is doing that will help us all to get to know each other better. Sign up to be one of the presenters.

Moderators

David Merrifield

Interim Executive Director, Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network

Speakers

Cort Buffington

Executive Director, KanREN

Kyle Hutson

HPC System Administrator, Kansas State University

Jeremy Evert

Associate Professor, Computer Science, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Computer Science Education, High Performance Computing Education, Research Outreach at a small teaching university

Terrance Figy

Assistant Professor, Wichita State University

Attendee Lightning Talks pptx

Friday June 4, 2021 2:15pm - 3:00pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Lightning Talk

3:00pm CDT

Day 2 Wrap-up

James Deaton wraps up the conference with a few words of thanks to all our presenters and sponsors, and especially for all the attendees who took time out of their busy schedules to participate in the GPN 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting. James will also announce the winners of the daily photo contest and the most popular Lighting Strike comment posted on the GPN Slack channel. Stick around to find out if you have won a prize!

Speakers

James Deaton

Executive Director, Great Plains Network

Friday June 4, 2021 3:00pm - 3:15pm CDT
.Main Room

Session

3:15pm CDT

Women in HPC BoF

The Great Plains Network-Women in HPC (WHPC) chapter invites everyone to a BoF/Happy Hour! Bring your discussions and preferred refreshments. Learn about this new chapter and learn how high performance computing can further your research. Across the disciplines from humanities to chemistry, applications to support computational research are happening at our institutions. We look forward to our discussion! This session is a Birds of a Feather session with the open ended topic of Women in High Performance Computing.

Moderators

Kim Owen

Program Manager Information Technology, North Dakota State University

Bio: Kim Owen, PhD, Division of Information Technology, North Dakota State University -- Kim currently serves as Program Manager for Research and Education Network Resources for the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology at North Dakota State University. Her... Read More →

Friday June 4, 2021 3:15pm - 4:15pm CDT
.Main Room

Session, Birds of a Feather (BoF) Session