On Friday, February 12th, members from the OCT Group had the opportunity to take a trip down to San Diego to reconnect with colleagues and tour the supercomputer center. The trip had been planned for a few months and something we have been looking forward to for quite some time.

Dr. Kee, Mona S., Michelle W., Dominique S., and Jamie M. were all able to drive to San Diego together to visit Nancy Wilkins-Diehr, Bob Sinkovits, and Mona Wong at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Dr. Kee and Mona had already established relationships with these individuals, but Michelle, Dominique, and Jamie would be meeting them for the first time. The day was full of catching up, updates on our projects, and stimulating conversations.

The OCT Group arrived in San Diego in the early afternoon. Our first stop was lunch with Nancy on UCSD’s campus. We had the pleasure of also meeting Nancy’s guest, Dr. Chunming Rong who was visiting from Norway. Over lunch, the seven of us had the opportunity to reconnect and get to know each other. The OCT Group was very intrigued by Dr. Rong’s background and experiences and we learned more about his research interests in security and privacy.

Following lunch, we all headed to a conference room in the Supercomputer Center where we brought Nancy up-to-speed on the CID project. Nancy is on the Advisory Board for our CID project, so her guidance and insights are extremely valuable. Our conversations with Nancy will allow us to further improve our research process with the perspective of a respected individual in the community of interest.

In between meetings, we were able to sit in on a segment of Dr. Rong’s talk on cloud computing and privacy. We were all so intrigued hearing his perspectives on security and learned so much! One of the most interesting points that sparked discussion in our group are the legal implications associated with security and privacy in the space of cyberinfrastructure.

Later in the afternoon, we met up with Bob Sinkovits, who had kindly offered to give us a tour of the supercomputer. We were all thrilled to finally see the machine room that provides resources to the national research community.  

Bob was a marvelous tour guide, teaching us about the technology itself and also sharing funny anecdotes. We learned so much about the infrastructure of the machine room and what it takes to run a supercomputer – we experienced heat, we experienced cold, and we even had to plug our ears at some points because of the noise from cooling fans!

Some of the highlights of the machine room tour were learning about the security of the room itself (and sometimes even individual machines), the cooling systems and how the racks were set up, understanding the chord arrangement, understanding the flooring and seeing Bob lift the tiles, becoming aware of the efficiency efforts (and that there are actually scales to measure efficiency of the supercomputer center!) and seeing the HIPPA-protected machines.

The HIPPA-protected machines were of particular interest to our Health Communication scholars, Mona S., Michelle W., and Dominique S. who have graduated from or are currently in the Masters of Science in Health and Strategic Communication program at Chapman. They have all studied and discussed the issues related to electronic medical records and the implication of digital data.  Seeing the physical gates around these machines brought this topic to life.

We were so grateful to have Bob as our tour guide. He taught us so much about the ins and outs of the machine room and the supercomputers, all with a sense of humor. After the tour, we enjoyed afternoon coffee. We were happy to hear that things are still going well for Bob and were proud to update him on the successes of the DID project.

At the end of the day, we headed north to Oceanside to meet Mona Wong for dinner. We originally met Mona W. at a Birds of a Feather (BOF) session at XSEDE 14 in Atlanta, GA. We have kept in touch through the years, both about the project and her career successes, as well as in a personal regard. Over dinner, we shared updates of the DID project and got to learn of her most recent successes. We also enjoyed talking about other things, for example, Mona W. and Michelle W. were able to connect on the subject of how to apply computing to studies of meditation. The two are both very passionate about the effects of meditation and will continue the conversation, combining their backgrounds in computer science and health communication research.

Each of us on The OCT Group had an incredible experience visiting with Nancy, Bob, and Mona W. We are so thankful for the time they took to meet with us and reconnect. It was such a pleasure to continue our conversations and also introduce them to newer members of our team. Our entire group is very much looking forward to keeping in touch and cannot wait for the next time we meet!