Rob's Nonsecret NCRR Meeting Notes

Rob MacLeod

September 16, 1999

Some note from the meeting today:

1. Time lines: the starting date for the grant is probably October 1, but we do not have the money in the account yet. ToDo: Chris will wait until we have the official notice and then make announcements to the world and start a number of things rolling.
2. Financial planning:
   • Koehn's commitment of returned overhead: can we get system support for CVRTI from this deal? He promised ``one technical staff member as part of the SGI for the VSC and proposed NCRR Center...'' as well as $100,000 in equipment? ToDo: Chris will contact Koehn and find out what sort of a deal we can get
3. Allocation/recruitment of people
   • CVRTI postdoc 1.2 FTE Rob proposes to get one full post-doc and allocate this, is we can find the right person, to modeling. The .2 we will use with some other funding to cover Ted to 25% as a programmer to link BioPSE to the CVRTI users. ToDo: Rob will check on person Peter Schroeder recommended and see if he would fit.
   • Dave (100%) The man for all reasons and also chief of staff in the modeling project
   • Steve (40%) Reduce to 20%
   • Rob Keep at same level as presently until Jan 1, then switch to 23% from NCRR
   • Chuck Reduce funding support, but not clear yet to what level. ToDo: Chuck decide on funding support level from NCRR.
   • Yarden (20%) Point him first at modeling, but keep in reserver for all sort of other projects as the need arises
   • CVRTI Grad 1 Use to cover our 50% of Laura, after one year, she may need additional support, by year three for sure would require 100% support.
   • CVRTI Grad student Rob will find another student
   • CS Grad students (2) Rob van Uitert for simulation and perhaps Gordon for vis if we can match his ambitions with NCRR projects
   • Leonid (40%) Simulation, perhaps as intermediary between Leahy and us or even Dana and us. ToDo: think about this some more; Rob can contact both Richard and Dana, who is on sabbatical this year in Spain
   • Software Manager Key position and perhaps tricky to find. Lori (?) in Bob Kessler's group might be contact. ToDo: Chris will contact Bob to make inquiries.
   • Raelynn (20%)
   • Secretary (50%) Heidi
   • Programmers (2) Chris Moulding, to work on map3d conversion to OpenGL and an undergrad student for other things
   • Technical support Robert is taking on more PC/Linux stuff as well as SGI but at the moment, Steve is only Linux expert. Can we find some system support for Linux and then share some of Robert and whoever does Linux with CVRTI? No need to have permanent physical presence at CVRTI, just visits and remote management, working with Rob an Ted. ToDo: Chuck or Dave: see what arrangements are possible.
4. Budgeted Equipment
   • CVRTI: planned were dual-CPU Octane, single CPU Octane and Origin 200 server. Server is still a good idea to do fairly soon. For workstations, better to get used SGIs and await new IR graphics capabilities to appear sometime soon. SGI will move IRIX to Linux even for the MIPS machines so all moves to learning Linux are a good thing!
   • CVRTI: planned were 2 Macs and 2 PC compatibles with fast OpenGL graphics cards Steve has PC config for $3200 for the Windows/Linux machines. Macs can wait for now as we should have other immediate source for those. We plan to run Linux on all of them.
   • Network plans: work with John Storm to get the connection between CS and CVRTI working better. ToDo: Dave will contact John and a) diagnose the problem, and b) find out what we need to get reasonable access. Main problem is not pure throughput as much as intermittent response.
5. Organizational plans
   • need to be very structured because of the deadlines, deliverables and short time before renewal applications.
   • To achieve deadlines and still do research, best to make sure that each project has both staff and research personnel support. Students do need to make sure they include NCRR goals in their projects, but there is room for more flexibility for them than for staff.
   • Regular monthly meetings of all NCRR people and then irregular but frequent focused chalk talks put on by whichever group wants, but with whole SCI group invited.
   • First specific project: convert map3d to OpenGL

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Rob's Nonsecret NCRR Meeting Notes

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