The Middleware and Grid Interagency Coordination Team (MAGIC), a public-private team, composed of experts from academia, industry, and government, under NITRD’s Large Scale Networking Interagency Working Group, meets monthly to discuss current and future technologies and collaboration activities in distributed computing. See https://www.nitrd.gov/coordination-areas/lsn/magic/ for more information on MAGIC.
Between February and May 2021 MAGIC, then led by federal co-chairs, Richard Carlson, Office of Science, Department of Energy; and Tevfik Kosar, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, National Science Foundation, conducted a series of public meetings to examine cloud computing.
On February 3, 2021, MAGIC began the series with talks on federally funded cloud computing resources.
- Leveraging Cloud Computing Resources for Federally Funded Artificial Intelligence Research and Development, Gil Alterovitz, Director of Artificial Intelligence, US Dept of Veterans Affairs
- Chameleon: An Innovation Platform for Computer Science Research and Education, Kate Keahey, Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and the Consortium for Advanced Science and Engineering of the University of Chicago
On March 3, 2021, MAGIC featured the following presentations.
- Comments on Return on Investment Considerations and Assessment for Research Computing and Data Support, Alan Sill, Managing Director, High Performance Computing Center at Texas Tech University, Co-Director, NSF Cloud and Autonomic Computing Center
- Internet2 support of cloud access/usage, Dan Taylor, Director, Business Development, Internet2
On April 7, 2021, MAGIC focused more on using the cloud for research.
- The OSG Fabric of Services and Cloud Resources, Miron Livny, John P. Morgridge Professor of Computer Science, OSG Technical Director, UW-Madison/CHTC.
- Multi-Messenger Astronomy and the Merger of HPC and Cloud Computing, Peter Nugent, Senior Scientist, Division Deputy for Scientific Engagement & Dept. Head for Computational Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Opportunities for NIH cloud interoperability approaches to improve outcomes of pediatric diseases, Alisa Manning, Researcher at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
On May 5, 2021, MAGIC explored the use of cloud computing for teaching and training.
- Cloudbank: Managed Services to Simplify Cloud Access for Computer Science Research and Education, Kathy Yelick, Co-PI for CloudBank, Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Associate Dean for Research in the Division of Computing, Data Science and Society at UC Berkeley
- Integrating Cybersecurity Education with Cloud Computing, Haining Wang, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech and Chase Cotton, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Delaware
- Facilitating Remote Resources Usage via User Driven Web Applications, Weijia Xu, Research Engineer, Manager, Data Mining and Statistics Group, Texas Advanced Computing Center
MAGIC holds public meetings on the first Wednesday of each month (12-2 pm ET). If you would like more information on MAGIC’s activities, please contact NCO at nco@nitrd.gov.