Tech Talk: A Scientific Software Distribution Service using Software Containers, Automated Security Scanning and CVMFS

About the Event

Run by the ARDC Tech Talks Interest Group.

Speakers: Steffen Bollman, University of Queensland, and Audrey Stott, Pawsey Supercomputing Centre

Installing scientific software on HPC often requires substantial amounts of work. In this Tech Talk we would like to get input from the community on our idea for a community-led system that makes building and distributing scientific software more sustainable. Our goal is to collect container recipes in a GitHub repository, containers are then automatically built and tested and pushed to a container registry. The containers are security rated and HPC admins can select which container subset they would like to offer to their users. The software containers will be available via a national CVMFS server infrastructure.

Bio: After obtaining a Master degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Ilmenau University of Technology, Steffen completed a PhD on multimodal imaging at the University Children’s Hospital and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. Dr Bollmann then joined the Centre for Advanced Imaging at the University of Queensland as a National Imaging Facility Fellow, where he pioneered the application of deep learning methods for quantitative susceptibility mapping, in the group of Prof Markus Barth. In 2019 Steffen joined the Siemens Healthineers collaborations team at the MGH Martinos Center in Boston during a 1 year industry exchange where he worked on the translation of deep learning reconstruction techniques into clinical applications. Since joining the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland in 2020 Dr Bollmann develops computational methods to process quantitative magnetic resonance imaging data. As part of the ARDC platform grant AEDAPT, Steffen is developing the NeuroDesk platform – a flexible, scalable, and browser-based data analysis environment for reproducible neuroimaging.

Bio: Audrey comes from a mixed background of podiatric medicine, wet lab and bioinformatics. From working bedside, to bench, and DevOps, her experience in these fields have led her to the area of increasing accessibility for bioinformaticians in a data-driven world. She works at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre as a systems administrator to provide development and support for improving services and user experience for researchers.

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