NERSC Organization

NERSC Center and Computational Research Division (CRD) staff work to make NERSC a world leader in high performance computing and computational science. (Selected CRD staff work on advanced development projects for the NERSC Center and provide focused high-end support for NERSC clients.)

For contact information, see How to Contact NERSC.

Center Administration   [staff]

Systems Department

Jeff Broughton, Department Head  [contact info]

The Systems Department encompasses the work of five groups: Computational Systems; Computer Operations and ESnet Support; Mass Storage; Data Systems; and Networking, Security, Servers and Workstations. Together, these groups are responsible for balanced introduction and reliable and efficient operation of the best technologies for complete computational systems—computing, storage, networking, visualization and analysis. The goal of the science-driven systems strategy is to enable new scientific discoveries, and that requires a high level of sustained system performance on scientific applications.

Computational Systems Group

The Computational Systems Group is responsible for developing and managing NERSC's computational infrastructure. Their responsibilities include assessing and developing hardware and software, as well as overseeing the installation and configuration of new systems.

Computer Operations and ESnet Support Group

The Computer Operations and ESnet Support Group is responsible for the operation of all equipment in NERSC's High Performance Computing Department; maintenance and operation of the data storage system; and monitoring of computers, operation systems, and the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) communication networks. The group is available to assist researchers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Networking, Security, and Servers Group

The Networking team is responsible for NERSC's local area network infrastructure. They configure and maintain the routers and switches and work with ESnet to improve wide are network access to user sites. The Security team is responsible for NERSC's security configuration and for compliance with DOE and Berkeley Lab security requirements. They configure and operate intrusion detection systems and respond to security incidents. The Server team is responsible for the 24 by 7 support of the NERSC servers, which serve Web, NIM Account Management, Grid, Software Licensing, Email, Networking, Security and other services.

Storage Systems Group

The Storage Systems Group is responsible for management, maintenance, and future planning and development of NERSC's production storage infrastructure (the NERSC Global Filesystem and the HPSS archival storage). Their responsibilities include coordinated planning and delivery of bandwidth, capacity and service levels across multiple tiers of storage technology.

Technology Integration Group

Shane Canon, Group Lead  [staff]

The Technology Integration Group (TIG) takes on special projects that will increase NERSC's capabilities and better serve new user communities. (TIG's work is complementary to the NERSC Advanced Technologies Group, which has a longer-term research focus.)

Services Department

Francesca Verdier, Department Head  [contact info]

The Services Department includes the Advanced Technologies Group, the Analytics Team, the Outreach, Software and Programming Group, and the User Services Group. Together they are responsible for the entire range of support activities that enable a broad range of scientists to effectively use NERSC systems in their research. They concentrate on resources needed to realize the promise of highly scalable architectures for scientific discovery in multidisciplinary computational science projects.

Advanced Technologies Group

This group focuses on understanding the requirements of current and emerging NERSC applications to find hardware design choices and programming models to better serve their needs. With expertise in benchmarking, system performance, debugging and analysis, workload monitoring, use of application modeling tools, and future algorithm scaling and technology assessment, the group engages with vendors and the general research community to advocate technological features that will enhance the effectiveness of systems for NERSC scientists. This group is also the home of the petascale postdoc program and NERSC's Cray Center of Excellence on programming models.

Analytics Team

Peter Nugent, Team Lead  [staff]

Analytics is the intersection of visualization, analysis, scientific data management, human-computer interfaces, cognitive science, statistical analysis, and reasoning. The primary focus of the Analytics Team is to provide visualization and scientific data management solutions to the NERSC user community to better understand complex phenomena "hidden" in scientific data. The responsibilities of the team span the range from applying off-the-shelf commercial software to advanced development to realizing new solutions where none previously existed.

Outreach, Software, and Programming Group

David Skinner, Group Lead   [staff]

The Outreach, Software, and Programming Group engages with software projects and user communities for the purpose of making NERSC an effective resource for science. OSP is responsible for the support and improvement of open source and community supported software, evaluation of new software, and communicating software capabilities to HPC users. OSP integrates and develops NERSC software in application performance profiling, system monitoring, allocation management, science gateways, as well as grid and cloud computing. OSP also directs the SciDAC Outreach Center efforts in applying HPC expertise to academic research, industrial collaborations, and DOE funded research.

User Services Group

The User Services Group is the user community's primary point of contact with NERSC. This group is responsible for problem management and consulting; help with user code optimization and debugging; strategic project support; documentation; online, remote, and classroom training; and third-party applications and library support. User Services also supplies user account and allocations management support; and maintains and makes enhancements to the NERSC Information Management (NIM) system, including database management, client server code, and PHP web front end.