Researchers on Antarctic Ice Sheet, Ted Scambos, NSIDC Ted Scambos, NSIDC
Researchers on Antarctic Ice Sheet, Ted Scambos, NSIDC Ted Scambos, NSIDC

About the Polar Research Coordination Network

The Polar Research Coordination Network aims to connect the Polar Science, Data and High-Performance and Distributed Computing (HPDC) communities to enable deeper penetration of computing methods and cyberinfrastructure into the polar sciences. The 2013 Polar Cyberinfrastructure Workshop in Minneapolis was a first step, identifying the need for HPDC connections. The 2014 Polar HPDC Workshop at Rutgers University built on that foundation to introduce the communities to each other, and elicit challenges and initial use cases.

The next steps are to grow these relationships and to understand and articulate the HPDC requirements of the polar science community. To this end, the Polar Research Coordination Network has planned a series of workshops, brought together under four intertwined and progressive themes:

  1. a polar science challenge question sets the framework for all RCN activities
  2. building cross-community partnerships and collaborations
  3. education and training
  4. data management and cyberinfrastructure

These four themes are designed to yield technical results while also promoting the social objectives of the RCN: the facilitation, coordination, and exchange of information and skills, among an increasingly cognizant, communicative, and collaborative polar-HPDC community. Embedded within all of these themes is the unifying mission to understand and articulate the HPDC needs of the polar science community.

The Polar Research Coordination Network project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Science Foundation, under Award Nos 1542110, 1542052, 1542058 and 1541620