lauren.prox@duke.edu
lp203@duke.edu
Duke University
Timezone: Eastern l U.S.
PhD Student, Environment | Air Quality and Global Health
https://healthpolicyresearch-scholars.org/scholars/lauren-prox/
Interview was conducted on Monday 1/27 2-3 pm
Via sign up form:
Please describe your experience with supercomputing
I use supercomputers often
Are you familiar with the U.S. National Science Foundation's ACCESS program?
Yes, I've used ACCESS in my research
Via pre-survey:
How should we address you?
Lauren
Please describe your experience using advanced research computing?
I use ACCESS to run models and conduct data analyses for my doctoral research fairly regularly
If you've used ACCESS, what allocation level did you start with?
Explore
What have you used or hope to use the ACCESS website to do?
I've used the R coding and Machine Learning capabilities.
Remind us what your role is, as it applies to working with ACCESS:
Grad Student
What is your research domain?
Environmental Science
What courses do you teach?
No answer
What is advanced research computing is your resource particularly well suited for?
No answer
Who are your stakeholders?
No answer
What one thing do you appreciate most about the program?
It is affordable (free!) and accessible and I like the different trainings offered.
What one thing would you change about the program?
I would probably make it easier to use some of the interactive features in Rstudio
RECORDING: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1t_N8CXooEh0OEJGP0YbgEquemCfay6LK
Interview guide:
60-90 minute interview. Each task will take approximately 5-10 minutes.
Login, introductions, set up screen share, record
Interview notes here:
Lauren first heard about ACCESS at the AAG Annual Meeting conference:
https://www.aag.org/events/aag2024/
She attended an ACCESS workshop at the conference. Her allocation is with Texas A&M ACES. It was set up by her instructors, the PIs on the project. She may have seen some home page information during the workshop, but started out at http://allocations.access-ci.org as her home page for the interview.Task 1: Where can you find information about citing ACCESS in your publications?
Interview notes here
Went to search in Support. Noted AI chat bot was new. Found a link about citations within the search results that led to the Support page about citations.https://support.access-ci.org/announcements/remember-cite-access-your-research-papers
Earlier this year she did need to know how cite ACCESS. It took her awhile She communicated with Texas A&M and got information about how to cite publications through an email sent to her from Texas A&M ACES.
She sent the initial query with the GET HELP button and was pleased with how quickly they got back to her.Task 2: Where do you go to find Systems Status?
Interview notes here
Did not know what Systems Status meant. She did receive an email from Texas A&M that said her system would be down.Task 3: Where can you go to open a help ticket?
Interview notes here
She sent her initial query via the GET HELP button. She probably started at Support and then found the GET HELP button.Task 4: Where can you find XDMod? Do you know how to use this tool?
Interview notes here
Lauren was not familiar with the term XDMod. She started to explored events & training then Allocations, but was unsuccessful.
Used the term performance… where would you go to find your metrics / performance information about your job.
She was pleased to see that the website was geared to non-computer science – e.g. seeing a picture of human cells not numbers on the home page was a hint.
Lauren mainly uses R Studio that runs on Texas A&M ACES. Normally at Duke she sends her machine learning models to the Duke compute cluster. That computer is very slow. ACES is very fast!
Questions she might have about metrics or project performance – Projected time her job would take to run? How efficient is my code running?Task 5: Can you find what resources are running PyTorch?
Interview notes here
Asked Lauren to find out information about R Studio (since that is the software she uses). She knew to go to support and found software then used search to find R Studio.Task 6: Can you find a resource that runs ACCESS On-Demand?
Interview notes here
Lauren did not know what this was. She thought it meant access to online learning videos. Started in training.Task 7: Can you find an Affinity Group for FABRIC users?
Interview notes here
Lauren did know what Affinity groups were. She belongs to ACES and R Studio.Task 8: Where can you go for training to use ANVIL?
Interview notes here
Knows about training.Task 9: Can you find how to get started with ACCESS MATCH services to help you with your research project?
Interview notes here
Lauren does not know what ACCESS MATCH services means. Went to Support…Task 10: If you want to get involved and volunteer with the ACCESS community where would you go?
Interview notes here
Searched for “volunteer” and ended up at Match with the search results.Task 11: Please review this page and suggest any additions or deletions.
https://access-ci.org/get-started/for-graduate-students/
Interview notes here
Right at the top of the page “U.S-based graduate students” – wondered if you are eligible if you are not a U.S. citizen. Then scrolled down and saw eligibility. Thought this would be a good page to share with fellow grad students.Task 12: Are you planning to use ACCESS resources again?
Interview notes here
Yes, Lauren is in-process to get a new allocation. This time it will be for her and not as part of a group project. Currently is part of an Explore allocation project along with her instructors and fellow grad students.
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS:Wrap up, thank you