2024-01-16 ACCESS EC Meeting Agenda & Summary

1. RP Forum Bylaws @Eva Siegmann

   1. Summary from forum: similar to XSEDE SP bylaws - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s1jfE3CzI46y2tE6ZbS89HM6Tc5xQ7_8/view?usp=sharing - (most recent copy)

      1. be an open point for discussion for all RPs

      2. be formal communication channel for ACCESS to the RPs

         1. channel described

      3. Structure - elected chair and co-chair

      4. Will have a new chair for this year - Eva phasing out this week

      5. will communicate with EC and EAB as needed

      6. all ACCESS RPs are automatically members - other sites can submit application to become members

   2. EC will review and discuss - will vote at next meeting in two weeks - Jan 30th
      
      

2. Approval of summaries from prior EC meeting @John Towns (5 mins)

   1. 19th December 2023 EC Meeting Summary

      1. no cost engagement with SGX3 - Shawn will be following up with them to have a kickoff meeting - coming soon
         
         

3. Program Milestone Check @John Towns (5 mins)

   1. Action item for the awardees to update their program milestones

      1. no additional comments or updates

   2. Reminder: Do not edit "Dashboard" tab, please edit "ACCESS program milestones" tab as needed

   3. Stephen - website was released and discussed resource catalog enhancement is moving forward

      1. input on website is good

          

4. Next in-person ACCESS Quarterly Meeting @John Towns (10 mins) - September

   1. For Convenience of logistics and planning for all ACCESS staff, the ACO would like to proactively request the dates and location for the next quarterly meeting

   2. Location options: people will get info on rooms for next week

      1. Pittsburgh?

      2. Buffalo?

      3. Dallas?

      4. Indianapolis?

   3. Dates: - settle by emal

      1. Week of 2nd Sept - not a good week

      2. Week of 9th Sept

      3. Week of 16th Sept - more preferable

         1. Note that Tapia Conference is this week

      4. Week of 23rd Sept - double check CCSTAR date

      5. Lavanya - Ask Tom and Sharon if they have a preference for either the 16th or 23rd

       

5. Discussion about potential workshop focused on team cohesion and inclusivity/belonging @Leslie Froeschl

   • Meeting proposed for a DEI meeting during Feb Quarterly meeting + team building

     • Winona proposes a group from Colorado State - has experience with teams like ours - JEDI Workshop - https://jedicollaborative.com/

     • Person was not available for February

   • Would like to send out an RFP from other groups

   • Discussion

     • Email thread commented on balance - how much to team building and how much to DEI

     • Current plan is heavily weighted to DEI - can it be more balanced with team building?

     • February is a very short lead time for doing this - should we target a different date?

   • Treat this proposal as is - but look to future for additional meetings to include other team building events

     • Leslie will reword and we will proceed

   • Operations has budget and other teams do as well to contribute to funding this - should be ~$3000 per team
     
     

6. EC Vote on Communications Plan @Stephen Deems https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BqLGEzE4ME4gj8Mp7NNGWbOAjkw7odShSX9XEFsJRLc/edit

   1. And Communications SC Charter:

      1. Do we need a working group for communications? - discussion

         1. We did not mandate how often standing working groups should meet

         2. needs updated - include web and branding

   2. Comms Plan - header and footer should show PY3

      1. is ready for vote - 4 in favor and 1 abstain - passes

Meeting ended - the below topics will need moved to our next meeting - Jan 30

7. NAIRR Pilot Update @Dave Hart

   1. NAIRR Pilot will launch on January 24

      1. With 6 initial resources:

         1. Summit - DOE Oak Ridge National Laboratory

         2. Delta GPU - National Center for Supercomputing Applications

         3. Frontera - Texas Advanced Computing Center

         4. Lonestar6 - Texas Advanced Computing Center

         5. ALCF AI Testbed - DOE Argonne National Laboratory

         6. Neocortex - Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

      2. Allocations WG has been formed

         • Dave/John have been leading

         • Dave is the liaison between the RPs

      3. Proposals will be accepted until March 1, 2024.

         1. More resources are expected to be looped-in after and opportunities will eventually re-open.

      4. It’s expected that an RFI will be included in parallel to the allocations submission window.

      5. The theme for projects will be: Safe, Secure and Trustworthy AI

         • Testing, evaluating, verifying, and validating AI systems.

         • Improving accuracy, validity, and reliability of model performance, while controlling bias.

         • Increasing the interpretability and privacy of learned models.

         • Reducing the vulnerability of models to families of adversarial attacks.

         • Advancing capabilities for assuring that model functionality aligns with societal values and obeys safety guarantees ​

      6. The process will be quite similar to the COVID19 consortium.

8. Informational Items (10 mins)

   1. Allocations Stephen Deems

      1. A series of questions

         1. Presenting ACCESS Annual Metrics

            1. Would it be best to present calendar year? program year? …fiscal year?

            2. Calendar year would be the preference from Allocations.

            3. Would like to sync this with other teams before we go into annual report/review season.

         2. Question regarding ACCESS PEARC24 Plans

            1. BOF? Workshop? Are we thinking of anything here?

         3. Allocations Notifications

            1. Sharing a Google doc with notifications that go out to folks who request allocations.

            2. Looking for recommendations on how we can improve these, or better highlight specific areas of interest for each ACCESS team.

            3. Open question: Should we discuss a broader notifications strategy?

               1. e.g. after someone creates an account?

   2. MATCH Shelley Knuth

   3. CONECT Tim Boerner

   4. MMS Tom Furlani

      1.  

   5. OpenCI John Towns

      1. Submitted IRB for surveys.

      2. Waiting on EAB Chair for Dec report

      3. Awaiting feedback via external evaluator from Dec focus group discussion

      4.  

Misc Topics:

• we may need to consider more than an hour for each meeting OR moving meetings to weekly again

• Risk Management progress = change in likelihood due to mitigation efforts?

• Horizontal Leadership progress = compromises?

  • schedule these Jan 30th