Advanced software and globally distributed computing play a crucial role in the success of large scientific projects, of which the LHC is the largest. My involvement for computing in particle physics began as a postdoc at MIT, where colleagues and I developed the CDF Analysis Facility IEEE 51 (2004) 892. In my role as Deputy Software and Computing Manager for US ATLAS, I was responsible for managing a budget of $20M/year and 45 FTEs for U.S. computing facilities and core software activities. I was a co-PI for the NSF-funded DASPOS Project, which explores viable data, software, and analysis preservation strategies for high-energy physics and other science domains. In partnership with NCSA in 2010, I started the Tier-2 Computing Center at Illinois for LHC data processing. The Illinois Tier-2 Center now has ~5400 CPU cores and is an integral part of the largest LHC Tier-2 facility in the world Midwest Tier-2. Through allocations on the Blue Waters Supercomputer, my graduate student Dewen Zhong and I have worked to apply machine learning techniques to the problem of boosted Higgs boson identification.

Software Institute for High-energy Physics

Conceptualization. In 2016, I received an NSF award ACI-1558233 along with co-PIs at Princeton and Cincinnati, to lead a conceptualization effort for an NSF Scientific Software Innovation Institute for HEP (S2I2-HEP). We initiated a community-wide roadmap process to broadly identify key elements of computing infrastructure and software R&D required to realize the full scientific potential of the high-luminosity LHC running starting in 2024. The kick-off workshop for the S2I2-HEP Conceptualization was jointly held at the University of Illinois and NCSA in December 2016.

The S2I2-HEP Conceptualization is now complete, with our Strategic Plan submitted to the NSF and a Community White Paper where I served on the Editorial Board and as convener of the Data Analysis and Interpretation (DAI) Working Group and Editor for the DAI WG Report.

Further Reading

  1. T. Kim, et al., “The CDF Central Analysis Farm,” IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 51, 892-896 (2004)
  2. Antonio Alves Jr.et al. [HSF Collaboration]. “A Roadmap for HEP Software and Computing R&D for the 2020s”, arXiv:1712.06982 (2017)
  3. P. Elmer, M. S. Neubauer, and M. D. Sokoloff, “Strategic Plan for a Scientific Software Innovation Institute for High Energy Physics”, arXiv:1712.06592 (2017)
  4. L. Bauerdicket et. al. [HSF Collaboration], “HEP Software Foundation Community White PaperWorking Group - Data Analysis and Interpretation”, arXiv:1804.03983 (2018)
  5. D. Berzano, et. al. [HSF Collaboration], “HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper Working Group - Training, Staffing and Careers”, arXiv:1807.02875 (2018)
  6. K. Albertsson, et. al. [HSF Collaboration], “HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper Working Group - Machine Learning”, arXiv:1807.02876 (2018)