2023 MOC Alliance Workshop

Thank you for attending the first in-person opportunity for our community to gather since the start of Covid: the 2023 MOC Alliance Workshop! The workshop took place March 20th and 21st at Boston University’s George Sherman Union.

With over 250 in-person attendees, and a virtual audience that is still enjoying our event livestreams, our community was out in full force at our 2023 Workshop!

You can watch each presentation from our program on our YouTube channel here, or through our specific playlist for Day 1 and Day 2.

We had over 70 speakers and hundreds of attendees representing over 30 companies, multiple government agencies, and ten colleges and universities, including but not limited to:

Companies: A*STAR, ActBlue, Aitia Bio (formerly GNS Healthcare), Alibaba Cloud, Amazon, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Ampere, Apple, Arm, Boston Children’s Hospital, Cloudflare, Dell, Google, IBM, JP Morgan, Lenovo, Microsoft, NetApp, Nokia, NVIDIA, OpenInfra Foundation, Qualcomm, Red Hat, Seagate Research, Staples, State Street, Two Sigma
Government Organizations: Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC), National Science Foundation (NSF), United States Air Force (USAF)
Higher Education Institutions: Boston University, Emerson College, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute for Technology, Northeastern University, Princeton University, Tufts University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Toronto, Yale University

Event Program with Video Links:

Monday, March 20

9 am – 10:30 am: Welcome and MOC-A Updates

Introductory Remarks – Gloria Waters– Vice President and Associate Provost for Research, Boston University

History and Future of the MOC Alliance – Orran Krieger– Professor, Boston University & Peter Desnoyers– Professor, Northeastern University

Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) – John Goodhue– Executive Director, MGHPCC

Open Cloud Testbed (OCT) – Mike Zink– Professor, UMass Amherst

New England Research Cloud (NERC) & Other Services – Wayne Gilmore– Executive Director, Director of Research Computing, Information Services & Technology, Boston University & Scott Yockel– Director of Research Computing, Harvard University

Colosseum – Abhimanyu Gosain– Senior Director, Technical Programs, Northeastern University

11 am – 11:35 am: “The Commonwealth as a catalyst for cluster development and innovation” – Sharron Wall– Portfolio Direction, Research and Development Fund, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative

11:35 am – 1:15 pm: Microtalks I

Open Education Project – Jonathan Appavoo– Professor, Boston University & Danni Shi– Software Engineer, Red Hat

Workforce Development – Sarah Coghlan– Senior Technical Program Manager, Red Hat & Damien Eversmann– Chief Architect for Education, Red Hat

Elastic Secure Infrastructure (ESI): Past, Present, and Future – Apoorve Mohan– Research Staff, IBM & Tzu-Mainn Chen– Principal Software Engineer Red Hat

AI for Cloud Ops – Ayse Coskun– Professor, Boston University & Heidi Dempsey– Northeast Research Director, Red Hat

ChRIS on the MOC / Update and Roadmap – Máirín (Mo) Duffy– Senior Principal Interaction Designer, Red Hat & Rudolph Pienaar– Staff Scientist, Boston Children’s Hospital; Professor, Harvard Medical School

Unikernel Linux (UKL): Applying Unikernel Optimizations to a General Purpose OS) – Larry Woodman– Senior Distinguished Engineer, Red Hat & Eric Munson- Doctoral Student, Boston University

Log-Structured Virtual Disk (LSVD)/ D4N – Matt Benjamin– Senior Engineering Manager, Red Hat & Amin Mosayyebzadeh– PhD Candidate, Boston University

Hypervisor Fuzzing – Manuel Egele– Professor, Boston University & Bandan Das– Software Developer, Red Hat

BayOp: Taming and Controlling Performance and Energy Trade-offs Automatically in Network Applications – Sanjay Arora– Data Scientist, Red Hat & Han Dong– PhD Student, Boston University

Hardware/ Software CoDesign – Sahan Bandara– PhD Candidate, Boston University & Ahmed Sanaullah– Senior Data Scientist, Red Hat

2:45 pm – 3:20 pm: The Value of Hybrid Cloud with Red Hat – Blake Shiver– Vice President, Red Hat

3:20 pm – 3:45 pm: “Collaboration with the MOC Alliance” – Jon Stumpf– Group Head of Infrastructure Engineering, Two Sigma

4:15 pm – 5:15 pm: Microtalks II, Diversity of the MOC-A – Moderated by Will Tomlinson– Director, Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL)

David Boas, BIDS/BIDS-fNIRS

Naomi Caselli, ASL-LEX

Douglas Densmore, DAMP Lab

Hank Fien, NCIL

Milson Munakami, Harvard University

5:15 pm – 5:30 pm: Closing Remarks – Michael Daitzman– Director of Engineering and Product, MOC Alliance

Tuesday, March 21

9 am – 9:15 am: Welcome Remarks

David Luzzi– Senior Vice Provost for Research and Vice President of the Innovation Campus, Northeastern University & John Byers– Associate Dean of the Faculty/ Mathematical & Computational Sciences, Boston University

9:15 am – 10 am: Center Vision and Capabilities

Orran Krieger- Professor, Boston University & Peter Desnoyers- Professor, Northeastern University

10 am – 10:30 am: Industry Support Keynotes

Keynote 1: Hugh Brock– Research Director, Red Hat

Keynote 2: Larry Rudolph– Senior Research Scientist and Vice President, Two Sigma

IUCRC Research Proposals

1:15 pm Split Processes: Bringing the Process to the Data Cooperman (NU), Desnoyers (NU), Krieger (BU)

1:35 pm Storage as a network: extending distributed tracing to S3 Sambasivan (Tufts), Desnoyers (NU), Krieger (BU)

1:55 pm Real-Time Telemetry and Observability for Cloud Operation and Security Liu (BU), Starobinski(BU)

2:15 pm Serverless enhancements and file systems Shin (NU), Matta (BU)

2:35 pm Towards high performance and energy efficiency in open-source stream processing Kalavri(BU), Appavoo (BU)

IUCRC Research Proposals

3:15 pm Security and FPGAs in Disaggregated Data Centers Leeser (NU), Zink (UMass)

3:35 pm Interlock: Cloud-scale Data Flow Analyses for User Privacy Egele (BU), Robertson (NU)

3:55 pm Intelligent Operations in the cloud: towards efficiency, security, and resilience Coskun (BU), Stringhini (BU)

4:15 pm Accelerating FHE-based Computing using Custom Accelerators in Cloud Systems Kaeli (NU), Joshi (BU)

4:35 pm Enhancing Programmable Hardware Capability and Usability across HPC, Cloud, and Edge Herbordt (BU), Liu (BU), Mancuso (BU), Athanassoulis (BU), West (NU)

5 pm: Closing Remarks – Peter Desnoyers, Northeastern University

Original Workshop content below:

The MOC Alliance provides a structure for a set of interrelated projects that have grown up around the Mass Open Cloud (MOC) and Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). These projects include production cloud services (NERC, NESE, OSN) for domain researchers that are operated and facilitated by university research IT, a national testbed for cloud research (OCT), projects to enable scientific and medical researchers (Biogrids, ChRiS), projects to engage the open source (OI labs, Operate First) and system research (Red Hat Collaboratory, i-Scale) communities.

The workshop will bring together our unique community of Research IT, researchers, users, and industry to celebrate what has been accomplished and help define the MOC Alliance strategy moving forward. In addition, it will showcase how the Alliance is so much more than the sum of its parts. Sessions will cover research that was motivated by experience with a real cloud, the impact research has already had on upstream open source projects, and how some of these projects are starting to impact services that are part of the Alliance.

A conference schedule, registration form, and travel details can be found below. This is a hybrid event, so please make sure you’re selecting relevant responses if you plan to attend virtually! This page will be updated with new details as we get closer to the event, so make sure to check back for exciting announcements!

Thank you to everyone who attended! Please take a few minutes to complete survey here.

Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/@MassOpenCloudAlliance

Schedule (subject to change):

Monday, March 20

8 am – 9 am: Check-in, Breakfast & Networking
9 am – 10:30 am: Welcome and MOC-A Updates
- Introductory Remarks – Gloria Waters, Boston University
- History and Future of the MOC Alliance – Orran Krieger, Boston University & Peter Desnoyers, Northeastern University
- Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC) – John Goodhue, MGHPCC
- Open Cloud Testbed (OCT) – Mike Zink, UMass Amherst
- New England Research Cloud (NERC) & Other Services – Wayne Gilmore, Boston University & Scott Yockel, Harvard University
- Colosseum – Abhimanyu Gosain, Northeastern University
- Workshop Overview – Orran Krieger, Boston University
10:30 am – 11 am: Break & Networking
11 am -11:35 am: Keynote
- Sharron Wall, Mass Tech Collaborative
11:35 am – 1:15 pm: Micro-talks I
- OPE/ Interactive Books – Jonathan Appavoo, Boston University & Danni Shi, Red Hat
- Workforce Development – Sarah Coghlan, Red Hat & Damien Eversmann, Red Hat
- Elastic Secure Infrastructure (ESI) Research & Development – Apoorve Mohan, IBM & Tzu-Mainn Chen, Red Hat
- AI for Cloud Ops – Ayse Coskun, Boston University & Heidi Dempsey, Red Hat
- ChRIS – Máirín (Mo) Duffy, Red Hat & Rudolph Pienaar, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
- Unikernel Linux (UKL) – Larry Woodman, Red Hat & Eric Munson, Boston University
- LSVD/ D4N – Matt Benjamin, Red Hat & Amin Mosayyebzadeh, Boston University
- Hypervisor Fuzzing – Manuel Egele, Boston University & Bandan Das, Red Hat
- Kernel Tuning with Machine Learning – Sanjay Arora, Red Hat & Han Dong, Boston University
- Hardware/ Software CoDesign – Sahan Bandara, Boston University & Ahmed Sanaullah, Red Hat
1:15 pm – 2:45 pm: Lunch & Poster Session
2:45 pm – 3:20 pm: Keynote
- Blake Shiver, Red Hat
3:20 pm – 3:45 pm: Keynote
- Jon Stumpf, Two Sigma
3:45 pm – 4:15 pm: Break & Networking
4:15 pm – 5:15 pm: Discussion, Software Diversity on the NERC
- Will Tomlinson, Software & Application Innovation Lab (SAIL)
- David Boas, BIDS/BIDS-fNIRS
- Naomi Caselli, ASL-LEX
- Douglas Densmore, DAMP Lab
- Hank Fien, NCIL
- Milson Munakami, Harvard University
5:15 pm – 5:30 pm: Closing Remarks
- Michael Daitzman, MOC Alliance

Tuesday, March 21

8 am – 9 am: Breakfast & Networking
9 am – 9:15 am: Welcome Remarks
- David Luzzi, Northeastern University & John Byers, Boston University
9:15 am – 10 am: Center Vision and Capabilities
- Orran Krieger, Boston University & Peter Desnoyers, Northeastern University
10 am – 10:30 am: Industry Support Keynotes
- Hugh Brock, Red Hat & Larry Rudolph, Two Sigma
10:30 am – 10:45 am: Break and Networking
10:45 am – 11:45 am: IUCRC Presentation
- Mohan Kumar, National Science Foundation
11:45 am – 1:15 pm: Lunch & Poster Session
1:15 pm – 3 pm: Dual Track
- MOC Alliance Deep Dives
  - FPGA Tutorial – Suranga Handagala
  - NERC Demonstration – Milson Munakami
- IUCRC Research Proposals
  - 1:15 pm Split Processes: Bringing the Process to the Data Cooperman (NU), Desnoyers (NU), Krieger (BU)
  - 1:35 pm Storage as a network: extending distributed tracing to S3 Sambasivan (Tufts), Desnoyers (NU), Krieger (BU)
  - 1:55 pm Real-Time Telemetry and Observability for Cloud Operation and Security Liu (BU), Starobinski (BU)
  - 2:15 pm Serverless enhancements and file systems Shin (NU), Matta (BU)
  - 2:35 pm Towards high performance and energy efficiency in open-source stream processing Kalavri (BU), Appavoo (BU)
3 pm – 3:15 pm: Break & Networking
3:15 pm – 5 pm: Dual Track
- MOC Alliance Deep Dives
  - OpenDP Tutorial – Michael Shoemate, Harvard University
  - FABRIC Tutorial – Paul Ruth, RENCI
- IUCRC Research Proposals
  - 3:15 pm Security and FPGAs in Disaggregated Data Centers Leeser (NU), Zink (UMass)
  - 3:35 pm Interlock: Cloud-scale Data Flow Analyses for User Privacy Egele (BU), Robertson (NU)
  - 3:55 pm Intelligent Operations in the cloud: towards efficiency, security, and resilience Coskun (BU), Stringhini (BU)
  - 4:15 pm Accelerating FHE-based Computing using Custom Accelerators in Cloud Systems Kaeli (NU), Joshi (BU)
  - 4:35 pm Enhancing Programmable Hardware Capability and Usability across HPC, Cloud, and Edge Herbordt (BU), Liu (BU), Mancuso (BU), Athanassoulis (BU), West (NU)
5 pm – 5:05 pm: Closing Remarks
- Peter Desnoyers
5:05 pm – 5:45 pm: Industry Feedback Session
- Closed session for IUCRC industry attendees only
5:05 pm – 6:30 pm: Poster Session
6:30 pm – 8 pm: Reception (17th Floor, 665 Comm Ave)

Wednesday, March 22 (Northeastern University’s Fenway Center)

8 am – 8:30 am: Breakfast and Networking
8:30 am – 10 am: Industry Feedback Session
10 am – 11 am: NSF Session with Industry
- Industry and NSF Representatives Only
11 am – 11:30 am: IUCRC Closing Remarks

Travel:

Boston University George Sherman Union
775 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215

Accessible by the MBTA Green Line – “B” Line to Boston College, get off at Boston University Central.

Paid parking available at 766 Commonwealth Ave.

Recommended Hotels:

Hotel Commonwealth (0.5 miles from Boston University)
500 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215

Residence Inn Boston Back Bay/Fenway (0.4 miles from Boston University)
125 Brookline Ave
Boston, MA 02215

The Verb Hotel (0.6 miles from Boston University)
1271 Boylston St
Boston, MA 02215

The Eliot Hotel (0.8 miles from Boston University)
370 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215

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Boston University strives to be accessible, inclusive and diverse in our facilities, programming and academic offerings. Your experience in this event is important to us. If you have a disability (including but not limited to learning or attention, mental health, concussion, vision, mobility, hearing, physical or other health related), require communication access services for the deaf or hard of hearing, or believe that you require a reasonable accommodation for another reason please contact Tara at tmoran@bu.edu to discuss your needs.

Participant acknowledges and agrees that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19, an extremely contagious disease that can lead to severe illness and death, exists in any place where people gather. Participant is required to abide by and observe Boston University’s rules, requirements and procedures with respect COVID-19 and other communicable diseases, including but not limited to requirements for all visitors on campus to wear face coverings at all times except when actively eating and drinking. Boston University does not assume any liability for the contraction or spread of COVID-19, and by attending an event on campus, Participant expressly agrees to assume all risks related to COVID-19 incurred before, during, and after the event.