ARC is excited to be holding its annual Summer School between 8 July - 11 July 2024. A full list of available sessions can be viewed here. Below is the list of instructors who will be teaching this year.
Brent Dunington a
Brent Dunington is a seasoned Cloud Architect with a distinguished career in IT infrastructure and cloud solutions. He began his career at Rogers Cable, where he was instrumental in installing @Home internet services. He later contributed to the Y2K rollover project, ensuring systems were prepared for the transition, which ultimately proved to be uneventful.
Following his tenure at Rogers Cable, Brent joined Buy&Sell in the publishing industry, where hesupported the IT infrastructure necessary to deliver newspapers across Western Canada. His expertise in IT operations then led him to Teligence, where he pioneered the use of hypervisors with VMware. This innovation significantly reduced server room sprawl and introduced self-service development platforms.
Brent's career progressed at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he led the deployment of EduCloud, leveraging his extensive experience with VMware. Under his leadership, EduCloud evolved into a Hybrid Cloud Service, enabling the UBC community to safely and securely leverage public cloud services.
Beyond his professional achievements, Brent enjoys astrophotography, trivia and collecting vinyl records, reflecting his diverse interests and passions.
Brent is teaching the Introduction to the Commercial Cloud session on Tuesday, 9 July 2024.
Gabriel Smith b
Gabriel Smith is a systems analyst on ARC’s Research Platforms Team, where he supports the operation of the REDCap Flex platform and helps users accomplish their research goals in REDCap. Additionally in this role, he develops new platforms for the UBC research community and consults with both researchers and administrators on topics of data management. He has a B.Sc.H. from Acadia University and an M.A. from UBC, both in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, and has worked as a data scientist with UBC Health and Wellness, the UBC Faculty of Science’s Skylight unit, Simon Fraser University’s Transforming Inquiry into Learning & Teaching (TILT) team, and the UBC Data Science Institute’s Data Science for Social Good program.
Gabriel is teaching the Introduction to REDCap Flex session on Monday, 8 July 2024.
Jacob Boschee d
Jacob Boschee is a System Administrator II in ARC. He received his Ph.D in Physics at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He has supported researchers both during his graduate student term and years at ARC with preparing research workflows for HPC systems. Currently he is supporting researchers with migrating workflows to containers and making software accessible across a variety of HPC systems.
Jacob is the instructor for the Building Containers to Simplify Software Stacks on HPC and Cloud (Sessions I and II) on Tuesday, 9 July 2024 and Running Jobs on HPC (Sessions I and II) scheduled for Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
Jessica Galo e
Jessica Galo is a Sensitive Research Security Analyst with the UBC Advanced Research Computing (ARC). She has extensive experience facilitating clinical and administrative data research and providing consultation to researchers across Canada to ensure that their projects meet privacy, data transfer, and governing body policy requirements. At ARC, Jessica is involved in threat intelligence as well as cybersecurity and privacy analysis, consultation and education. Jessica holds a Canadian Institute of Access and Privacy Professionals (CIAPP) - Professional designation as well as an ISC2 Certified in Cybersecurity (CC) designation.
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jessicagalo
Jessica is teaching the Risky Research - Securing Your Secrets and Yourself session on Monday, 8 July 2024.
Jiarui (Jerry) Li f
Jiarui (Jerry) Li is the life science specialist for ARC at UBC. He also serves on the Bioinformatics National Team. Jerry holds a PhD in genetics from Fudan University, China and conducted postdoctoral research on bioinformatics and genomics in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry, Simon Fraser University. Before joining the ARC team, he worked successively as an assistant professor at Shanghai University, a lecturer at SFU, and the head of the Next-Generation Sequencing Department at Applied Biological Materials Inc.
Jerry is providing instruction for Introduction to High-Performance Computing and Data Storage session on Monday, 8 July 2024 and Running Jobs on HPC (Session I) on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
Ken Bigelow g
Ken Bigelow is a Systems Administrator II with the Advanced Research Computing group at UBC. Ken has over 20 years of experience as a systems administrator, with the last 18 years with the Department of Medicine at UBC. Ken has a particular interest in high-performance computing and has seen the evolution from cluster CPU computing to highly specialized GPUs for machine learning and image processing. Ken is also on the national cloud team working with the Arbutus Cloud - Digital Research Alliance of Canada. Ken's most recent obsession in the HPC world is using Slack to create creative Apptainer containers for specialized HPC needs.
Ken is teaching Building Containers to Simplify Software Stacks on HPC and Cloud (Sessions I and II) on Tuesday, 9 July 2024.
Luc Letarte h
Luc Letarte is a Sensitive Research Specialist with UBC Advanced Research Computing, where he brings his expertise in safeguarding digital research environments. With a passion for privacy and security, Luc holds the credentials of Certified Information Privacy Professional (IAPP) and Certified in Cybersecurity (ISC2), and is an active member of the cybersecurity community. Since joining UBC, he has been involved with the local and national research community to implement, support and promote good cybersecurity, privacy and risk management practices. Luc's diverse background spans both the public and private sectors, providing him with a holistic view of the challenges and opportunities in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/lucletarte
Luc is teaching Risky Research - Securing Your Secrets and Yourself session on Monday, 8 July 2024.
Michael Tang i
Michael Tang is the ARC Cloud Analyst for Advanced Research Computing at UBC. He is also a member of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada’s Cloud National Team and the Arbutus Cloud Operations National Team. Michael has a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computing Engineering from the University of British Columbia. In his roles, Michael manages many of the ARC’s cloud pilots and supports Canadian researchers in the community and public cloud
Michael is the instructor for Introduction to the Commercial Cloud on Tuesday, 9 July 2024 and Introduction to Cloud and Virtual Machines scheduled for Thursday, 11 July 2024.
Michael Nesrallah j
Michael Nesrallah is the Research Computing Specialist at ARC. Michael received his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Ottawa. He has experience as a researcher, teacher, and science writer. Before coming to ARC, he also worked in the quantum computing industry. Michael is a problem solver and researcher at heart who deeply enjoys helping other researchers achieve their goals.
Michael is teaching the Introduction to High-Performance Computing and Data Storage session on Monday, 8 July 2024.
Raymond Norris k
Bio to come.
Raymond is instructing the Parallel Computing with MATLAB Parts I & II sessions scheduled for Thursday, 11 July 2024.
Roman Baranowski l
Roman Baranowski has been involved in HPC since 1991 and has been working as the UBC Site Lead for Compute Canada/WestGrid since 2003. In addition, Roman is a member of the Compute Canada Storage National Team and serves on the National Team: Simon Fraser University. His background is in Theoretical and Computational Physics and Chemistry with a PhD from Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Roman is teaching Introduction to High-Performance Computing and Data Storage on Monday, 8 July 2024 and Running Jobs on HPC (Session II) scheduled for Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
Sanja LeBlanc m
Sanja LeBlanc brings over two decades of expertise to her role as the operations manager for the Systems Infrastructure team at the University of British Columbia. Her team is dedicated to the daily support and management of UBC's private cloud, EduCloud, encompassing virtualization, storage, backup, and performance management. Recently, Sanja has been pivotal in the transition towards integrating public cloud services through the innovative Hybrid Cloud Service, enhancing the university's technological landscape. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from UBC.
Sanja will be teaching the Introduction to the Commercial Cloud session on Tuesday, 9 July 2024.
Scott Baker n
Scott Baker is the Manager, Sensitive Research at UBC Advanced Research Computing. He leads a group of privacy and security professionals focused on helping researchers find balanced solutions for their research projects. He is a member of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada national security council, and has over 25 years of experience managing people, projects, and IT systems.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pawprint/
Scott is teaching Risky Research - Securing Your Secrets and Yourself session on Monday, 8 July 2024.
Venkat Mahadevan c
Venkat Mahadevan is the Cloud Architect at UBC ARC. He is a member of the Digital Research Alliance of Canada cloud national team where he supports the community cloud infrastructure used by researchers across Canada. In addition, he also implements solutions to support research workloads on various commercial clouds such as Azure and AWS. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Computer Science. Venkat is also a recipient of two UBC awards: the 2022 President’s Staff Award for Creativity and Innovation, and the 2022 VPRI Staff Award for Leadership.
Venkat is teaching the Introduction to Digital Research Alliance of Canada session on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
Visit the ARC 2024 Summer School Program page for detailed information on the sessions offered.