Making campus bridging work for researchers: Can campus bridging experts accelerate discovery?

SUMMARYThe computational demands of an ever increasing number of scholars at universities and research institutions throughout the country are outgrowing the capacity of desktop workstations. Researchers are turning to high performance computing facilities, both on their campuses and at regional and national centers, to run simulations and analyze data. The Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is one of the first places researchers turn to when they outgrow their campus resources. XSEDE machines are far larger (by at least an order of magnitude) than what most universities offer. Transitioning from a campus resource to an XSEDE resource is seldom a trivial task. XSEDE has taken many steps to make this transition easier, including the campus bridging initiative, the Campus Champions program, and the Extended Collaborative Support Service program. In this paper, we present a new facet to the campus bridging initiative in the form of the campus bridging expert, an information technology professional dedicated to aid researchers in transitioning from desktop, to campus, to regional, and to national resources. We outline the current state of affairs and explore how campus bridging experts could provide maximal impact for minimal investment on the part of the organizing body. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.