National Science Foundation Funded Workshop on "Research Data Lifecycle Management"
July 18 - July 20 2011 at
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

We are pleased to announce the NSF funded Workshop on "Research Data Lifecycle Management".

The objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers, campus Information Technology (IT) leaders, and library/archive specialists to discuss the topic of data lifecycle management specifically as it relates to computational science and engineering research data.  This discussion will result in a common understanding of best practices and funding models for selecting, storing, describing, and preserving these digital data. The workshop will also help to cultivate partnerships between these communities to foster continued developments in the preservation and sharing of research data.

We now seek applications for participation and submissions of position papers for the workshop.  In order to apply, please go to https://rcs.columbia.edu/rdlm and follow the links to register.  The deadline for applications is June 20, 2011, but we will review and accept applications on a rolling basis.

Important Dates
Paper submission and registration deadline: June 20,2011 (but accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis)
Hotel registration date: June 20, 2011
Workshop dates: July 18 - 20, 2011

Workshop Description

This workshop will bring together thought leaders on the topic of Research Data Lifecycle Management, including researchers, librarians, archivists, and IT professionals. Through the workshop program, attendees will be able to participate in the development of a data lifecycle management framework. By drawing together this diverse group of specialists, the workshop will be able to leverage the progress made to date by the digital curation, preservation and open repositories communities. The workshop will also promote the needed interaction, collaboration, and information sharing among diverse institutions and groups involved in High Performance Computing (HPC), research computing, IT, libraries, and archives. The goal is to develop a combination of policy and financial frameworks that ensures maintenance of important data over time scales longer than the career of any individual investigator.

On-site participation will be limited to a total of seventy-five leaders with balanced representation from the following areas: researchers who use computational resources to produce and access data sets; IT professionals involved in research computing support; and librarians/archivists who manage this type of data.  In addition, video-conferencing will be used to reach a much broader range of off-site participants.  We hope to engage a diverse population of researchers and professionals involved in research data lifecycle management to represent varying perspectives and differing institutions in the conversation.

We strongly encourage submission of position papers from people involved in the production, use, and management of data used in research computing.  The papers will help to gather input from a broad community to seed the conversations at the workshop.  The papers will also be used in the process to select individuals to participate on-site in the workshop.  Position papers should be no longer than 3 pages, and can be submitted as described on the registration website any time from now through June 20, 2011, 5 pm EDT.   Selection for participating on-site will be decided by a review panel on a rolling basis.  Applicants will be invited to participate on-site within two weeks of submitting their registration request.

This NSF funded workshop is a collaboration between the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) and the EDUCAUSE ACTI Campus Cyberinfrastructure Group, and will be hosted at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ, Monday, July 18 - Wednesday, July 20.  The workshop will include an informal reception at the Prospect House, Princeton University's faculty/staff club on Monday, July 18 at 6 pm.   It will also include a dinner at Rats, a restaurant on the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ on Tuesday, July 19 at 5:30 pm.

The findings of the workshop will be described in a report written by the organizing committee and an invited group of participants.  The report will be submitted to EDUCAUSE for publication and posted on the CASC website.

Please feel free to contact member of the organizing committee by email if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions.

Best Regards,

Organizing Committee

Curt Hillegas, Ph.D. - Chair
Director of Research Computing, Princeton University
curt@Princeton.EDU

Rajendra (Raj) Bose, Ph.D.
Manager, Research Computing Services, Columbia University
rbose@columbia.edu

Kerstin Lehnert, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University
lehnert@ldeo.columbia.edu

Clifford Lynch, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information
Clifford@cni.org

Oren Sreebny
Senior Director Emerging Technologies and Communications, IT Services, University of Chicago
orens@uchicago.edu