Midwest Research Computing and Data Consortium
In this series, we dive into the world of the Midwest Research Computing and Data Consortium. We explore its members, their challenges, and prospects. Recently, we had the opportunity to connect with Thomas White, a Critical Environment Engineer in Data Center Strategy and Operations at the University of Washington. Thomas was a speaker at the recent Next Generation Data Center Workshop, and he shares his insights on the field in the excerpts below:
In this series, we dive into the world of the Midwest Research Computing and Data Consortium. We explore its members, their challenges, and prospects. Recently, we had the opportunity to connect with Hadrian Djohari who serves on the Midwest RCD Steering Committee. Hadrian is the Director of Advanced Research Computing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He shares his experiences and insights on the field in the excerpts below:
I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Almost all my academic research work has been completed using modeling and computational analysis: Finite Element Model, Molecular Dynamics and Dissipative Particle Dynamics tools. My work has required intense research computing resources at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, the Army HPC Research Center, UMass Amherst, and Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Working with different computing clusters throughout a variety of regions provides me with rich, diverse experiences that will help me continue to enjoy working in this field into the future.
By starting as a dedicated, experienced HPC user, I was ready for research computing opportunities when one became available at CWRU. CWRU HPC needed a part-time administrator in 2009. This was an opportunity that I took eagerly, but also with some apprehension. The only other admin had left CWRU, and I had to tackle building the cluster and the job scheduler within a year. With a lot of help, we ended up running IBM’s xCAT software and Moab scheduler software to successfully build our cluster. By that time, I had become a full-time HPC system administrator the following year.
In my current position, my key responsibilities are to provide research, computational, storage, and other services to the research community at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).To maximize the grant funding that CWRU obtains, we provide centralized Research Computing infrastructure to the faculty members so they can focus on the science behind the computational work, rather than having to build their own computational infrastructure. Some examples of the computational work: run AI/ML jobs on medical images to predict health issues or evaluate MRI images in real-time via high bandwidth connections to provide rapid diagnosis.
We also investigate how our resources should look like in the future by trying to see what new hardware or software are coming that will need to be installed in the HPC: e.g. the newer GPU cards, the shared memory for CPU and GPU processors, and so on. This is necessary to avoid getting caught in the older technologies when the new ones have started picking up utilizations.
We are also highly engaged with our users, via workshops that we run every semester, the websites, the help desk tickets, and the office hour sessions.
Midwest RCD is a group that focuses on the Research Computing and Data people who support the Research Computing functions. CWRU believes this organization can help the future of this workforce and can lift the expertise of RC in the region over the long term. CWRU has been active in the beginning in the MWRCD with Mike Warfe and then taken over by me when Mike left CWRU. MWRCD provides the framework to build the community so that we can help each other as the challenges each institution faces are similar. I regularly help plan for the Annual Conference, including the one recently held in Cleveland in April 2025. Other roles include scoring on incoming proposals for various MWRCD activities, including the Community Visits, the new Affinity Groups proposal and the Emerging Leaders opportunities. We also reach out to other Northeast Ohio institutions for participation in the MWRCD Annual Conferences.
The Research Computing and Data (RCD) field offers a wide-open area of possibilities for career development and career advancement. You can enter it from various study fields and thrive on these new roles. With a little bit of hard work during the transition, one can quickly learn how to survive in the field and then to progress into excelling in the field. Any of your prior experience in the field, whether it is as a prior HPC user or a general Linux administrator, will help you make the transition relatively smoothly.