RCN:CIP: A Connect.CI-based Community-Wide Mentorship Network (CCMnet) for the Advancement of Science and Engineering Research and Education

NSF22558 Abstract Research Coordination Networks: Fostering and Nurturing a Diverse Community of CI Professionals (RCN:CIP) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) has become ubiquitous in research, in part a result of the unprecedented acceleration and availability of high-performance computing (HPC) processing power that is enabling so many breakthrough discoveries. A growing number of researchers are finding that their needs for resources and resident expertise cannot be met locally, causing them to seek out high-performance computing resources with which they have little direct interaction and of which they may have minimal knowledge. There is an urgent need for support at many levels and compelling need for research computing facilitators (RCF) and research software engineering (RSE) services from CI professionals. There is, however, a growing shortage of personnel to meet this need. We propose to establish a community-wide network of CI professionals composed of subject matter experts across the country, leveraging the Connect.CI portal as the network''s central coordination hub, to develop and implement a national CI mentorship network. We believe that by maximizing the effectiveness of the CI professionals in the community by positioning them as mentors to train incoming personnel through a collaborative mentor network is critical to successfully building and sustaining the CI workforce. Connect.CI serves as an aggregation point for individuals participating in six NSF-funded/NSF- originated Cyberteam programs, as well as the XSEDE Campus Champions. The proposed project would harness the potential of this aggregation and build out a national mentor network that encourages productive connections among CI personnel distributed across the nation; and efficient, artifact-driven sharing of knowledge and expertise concentrated on research CI.