ARDC National Skills Forum (December 2024)
Go to eventabout ARDC National Skills Forum (December 2024)
The success of the Australian eResearch Skilled Workforce Summit was due to the wonderful opportunity the Summit created for peer to peer networking and insights into international best practice on workforce development.
The Summit was held across two days in July at the University of Sydney and co-convened by the Australian Research Data Commons, Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) and Universities Australia (UA). It brought together 175 participants involved in developing a digitally skilled workforce to explore how increasing capabilities of researchers and research support professionals can lead to improved use and accessibility to national research infrastructure such as high performance computing, cloud compute, research software and research data management. It was also a chance to discuss how national coordination of community development, training initiatives and policy initiatives could be improved, with ARDC providing a leadership role. Outcomes of the summit include the need to:
Participants came from 23 universities (45%), eResearch service providers (25% ), and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) capabilities (12%), in addition to representatives from peak bodies, research disciplines and international organisations.
“The Summit was a great opportunity to meet and brainstorm with colleagues from around the country. The level of engagement and energy throughout the sessions spoke to the attendees’ commitment and passion to the Summit’s topics,” Ann Backhaus, Education and Training Manager, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre said.
“I found it very encouraging to know that, while we all face many of the same barriers, we can also all talk collaboratively about ideas for overcoming those shared challenges through nationally repeatable, feasible, scalable frameworks and solutions.”
Highlights from the Summit included presentations showcasing successful institutional approaches to researcher training, including:
and discipline approaches including
The outcomes from the Summit will be used to fine-tune the ARDC Skilled Workforce programs. We will also be presenting some of the Summit materials in a webinar format in the coming months. So sign up to the ARDC newsletter to be notified or check out our events page.