NSF-Funded $10 Million MATCH Project Will Ensure CI Support Services Keep Pace with Academic Scientific Research

MATCH Press Release

Holyoke, Massachusetts, April 25, 2022 – The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) will participate in a $10 million National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded initiative to reimagine cyberinfrastructure user support services and delivery to keep pace with the evolving needs of academic scientific researchers.

The initiative—called MATCH, or Multi-tier Assistance, Training and Computational Help—is part of a larger program called Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services and Support (ACCESS). ACCESS is replacing the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which has been the leading program for NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure for the U.S. for the past eleven years.

In addition to the MGHPCC, participating institutions include the University of Colorado, which will lead the initiative, the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and the University of Kentucky.

“The ACCESS awards implement an agile and scalable fabric of innovative services with the goal of ensuring democratized and equitable access to NSF’s advanced cyberinfrastructure ecosystem and broadening its transformative impacts,” said Manish Parashar, Office Director, Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure at NSF.

MATCH will be animated by three themes:

• Leverage modern information delivery systems and simplify user interfaces to provide cost-effective scaled support to a broader community.
• Engage experts from the community to develop training materials and instructions that can dramatically reduce the user learning curve.
• Employ a matchmaking service that will maintain a database of specialist mentors and student mentees that can be matched with projects to provide the domain-specific expertise needed to leverage ACCESS resources.

The project will incorporate Open OnDemand, an interactive interface to remote computing resources, the Pegasus workflow-management system, and the Connect.CI portal currently led by the Northeast Cyberteam in the multi-tiered support framework.

MATCH builds on the successful Northeast Cyberteam program, an NSF-funded, MGHPCC-hosted initiative to make advanced computing resources available at small and mid-sized colleges and universities in New England that might not otherwise have access to them.

“MATCH re-appropriates Northeast Cyberteam tools and methods in a scalable approach to addressing increasingly sophisticated and diverse researcher needs, enabling new discoveries at the forefront of science and society,” said Julie Ma, Program Manager, MATCH and Northeast Cyberteam.

The MATCH program will be discussed at a co-located event at the 2022 Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC) conference that will be held July 10-14 in Boston, Massachusetts.

Links

MATCH Website