CHTC Research Computing Facilitators Foster Innovation

As the core research computing center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the leading high throughput computing (HTC) force nationally, the Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC), formed in 2014, has always had one simple goal: to help researchers in all fields use HTC to advance their work.

Soon after its founding, CHTC learned that computing capacity alone was not enough; there needed to be more communication between researchers who used computing and the computer scientists who wanted to help them. To address this gap, the CHTC needed a new, two-way communication model that better understood and advocated for the needs of researchers and helped them understand how to apply computing to transform their research. In 2013, CHTC hired its first Research Computing Facilitator (RCF), Lauren Michael, to implement this new model and provide staff experience in domain research, research computing, and communication/teaching skills. Since then, the team has expanded to include additional facilitators, which today include Christina Koch, now leading the team, Rachel Lombardi, and an additional team member CHTC is actively hiring.

CHTC aims to bring the power of HTC to all fields of research, and to allow the future of HTC to be shaped by insight from all fields. Specifically, CHTC supports a variety of scalable computing resources and services for UW-affiliated researchers and their collaborators.

CHTC will join the rest of the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences in the new building that opens in 2025.

Read more about RCFs in this article.