Summer student interns have a lot to offer Berkeley Lab: they are motivated, energetic and can bring fresh perspectives to old problems. They also represent the next generation of researchers and engineers. To capture the best talent, ESnet has built an internship program that operates as a student-to-staff pipeline, channeling not only talent but diversity into Berkeley Lab, said Patricia Giuntoli, area lead for Networking and Systems at ESnet.

“Diversity is important in order to have unique and different views. Sometimes solving a problem or getting to a new place can be challenging, and having people with different experiences and views can help create unique solutions,” said Giuntoli.

This summer, four students have been working at ESnet. Three of them—Hocine Mahtout, from the Bordeaux Graduate School of Engineering; Kunal Singh, from UC Berkeley; and Aaron Jia, who is also attending UC Berkeley—are working with ESnet Research Scientist Mariam Kiran on a project that employs machine learning and parallel computing to optimize network traffic and path allocation. In 2017, Kiran received an Early Career Award to support this work.

Jia and Singh are developing algorithms to predict network traffic and deep-learning methods to model network traffic. This information can be used to prepare for intense server traffic and help designate server workload. When they are done with the research, they will each write a paper about their findings and present their findings at SC18 in Dallas, TX.

Mahtout is also working on a separate project with Kiran. A few years ago, Kiran started working on iNDIRA, a software package that translates a user command written in English (not a programming language) into network commands. After seeing Kiran talk about iNDIRA in a presentation, Mahtout independently contacted Kiran to discuss ways they might work together. They later launched a second version of the project called EVIAN that incorporates machine learning to improve future interactions with users.

We did not intend on creating a new version of iNDIRA, but because Mahtout was so excited about working on it we now have a second version of iNDIRA coming out,” Kiran said. “As an intern you see the environment and the types of science happening here and making a difference to everyday life, and it’s so exciting that it makes you want to be part of it all.”

Meanwhile, the fourth student—John Christman, a senior from University of Nevada, Reno whose father, John Christman Sr., recently retired from ESnet after 29 years—is working with ESnet Network Engineer Nick Buraglio to improve ESnet security and traffic analysis software. Christman, who also worked at ESnet last summer doing network traffic analysis, is working with the monitoring group to improve ESnet’s networks by getting new servers and networks up and running and securing them from cybersecurity attacks.

“John has been tasked with working on the prototyping team for a next-generation management network design,” said Nick Buraglio, ESnet network engineer and Christman’s mentor. “John has excelled at both the tasks of leading pieces of a larger project as well as operating as a high performing team member. He has gained experience with completing deliverables that are critical pieces of a larger project.”

At the University of Nevada Reno, Christman is majoring in Information Systems, which is similar to computer science except geared towards use in enterprise. He plans to get his masters degree in this subject at UC Berkeley.

“I’ve learned an incredible amount while I’ve been here. From hearing presentations from world-class scientist to gaining hands-on experience, this summer has been filled with new insights on cutting-edge information,” he said. “My expectations have not only been met but exceeded. I look forward to coming in everyday, as each day brings something new and exciting. I’m truly blessed to be interning here this summer.”

One of ESnet’s goals with the summer student program is to give students the opportunity to gain a working knowledge of ESnet that might lead them to join the ESnet team once they graduate. Several ESnet employees, including Kiran, Sowmya Balasubramanian and Scott Richmond, began their careers at the lab as interns.

“My goal was to educate myself and gain practical experience in network operations so I could leverage that into a career in industry and the laboratory was a well-respected place that was accepting interns,” said Richmond, who is now a network engineer at ESnet. “After spending nearly a year at ESnet as a student assistant, the training and education I received from my mentors and colleagues in software, hardware and networking allowed me to transition to a full-time career as a Computer Systems Engineer with ESnet, working in the Operations and Deployment group.”

Some of this summer’s interns may just follow suit.

“This internship has gotten me thinking about what I want to do in the future,” said Jia. “I had never had formal work experience before, and this gave me a great idea of what it’s like.”

Written by Cleighton Roberts

Several ESnet staff members helped organize and are participating in the second annual National Research Platform (NRP) workshop. Held August 6-7, 2018, at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, the workshop brings together representatives from more than 100 key institutions who are working to create a nationwide science data network.

Co-sponsored by a National Science Foundation (NSF) award to the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), CENIC, ESnet and Internet2 and hosted by Montana State University, the workshop is designed to identify best strategies for enabling high-performance data transfer via interoperable science DMZs and data transfer nodes at a national scale. The Science DMZ is a secure portion of the network, built at or near the campus or laboratory’s local network perimeter that is tailored to the needs of high performance science applications, including high-volume bulk data transfer, remote experiment control, and data visualization.

The NRP is an outgrowth of the Pacific Research Platform (PRP), an NSF-funded cooperative agreement with UCSD and UC Berkeley formed in 2015 to improve the end-to-end high-speed networking data transfer capabilities in collaborative, big-data science. Today the PRP is a regional “superhighway” linking most of the research universities on the West Coast, as well as partner institutions in other parts of the U.S., via three advanced networks: CENIC’s California Research & Education Network, Pacific Wave and ESnet.

“The PRP is a regional DMZ that is built directly on the DMZ concept developed by DOE/ESnet, and that platform is what we are trying to scale up to the national level,” said Larry Smarr, principal investigator for the PRP, founding director of Calit2 and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). “The far goal is to have a national research platform based on the DMZ model.”

Smarr and Internet2’s Jim Bottum co-chaired the first NRP workshop, held in August 2017. For the 2018 workshop, Smarr is co-chairing with ESnet Director Inder Monga and Ana Hunsinger, vice president of Community Engagement of Internet2. The community-wide program committee is co-chaired by Marla Meehl, who manages the high-speed network for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and Sherilyn Evans, COO of CENIC, and includes Kate Mace, Jen Leasure, Bottum, Maxine Brown and Wendy Huntoon.

“NRP is designed to bring together the networking practitioners, scientists and larger R&E community to figure out how to build scalable platforms that can make the best use of fast networks for science applications,” said Monga. “DOE and NSF have already invested a lot of effort in building scienceDMZs in national labs, supercomputing centers and universities. The PRP and NRP efforts are a way to build a sustainable, community-supported platform that will be transformational for science in the upcoming decade” The NRP also highlights the long-standing collaborations between NSF and DOE as well as Berkeley Lab and UCSD, he added.

In addition to Monga, Eli Dart, a network engineer in ESnet’s Science Engagement Group, is giving a keynote at the NRP workshop on “Modern Cyberinfrastructure: The Ladder to the Shoulders of Giants.” Mace, a science engagement engineer at ESnet, is participating in a panel session, “Scaling Across the NRP Ecosystem From Campus to Regional to National – What Support Is There?” and chairing another, “International-Scale Measurement Technologies/Techniques.”

With the NRP collaboration still in the prototyping and engineering optimization stage, this year’s workshop will focus on requirements from domain scientists and the networking architecture, policies, tools and security necessary to scale to hundreds of institutions participating in the NRP.

“To accelerate the rate of scientific discovery, researchers must get the data they need, where they need it and when they need it,” Smarr said. “This requires a high-performance data freeway system that connects data generators and users of that data. Through the NRP we are investigating what would be necessary to create a national DMZ that would link academic researchers at campuses all over the country.”

Written by Kathy Kincade