Annette Kitajima, principle technologist at Sandia National Laboratories, is this year’s co-chair of the SCinet fiber team. Annette has been volunteering with SCinet for the past 15 years, and has led the fiber team for 11 of those years.

Due to the virtual nature of SC20, we will not be building the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure that our attendees have to come to expect as part of their SC experience. This feature aims to spotlight the dedicated volunteers and generous contributors whose tireless efforts and enthusiasm have helped shape the SC experience over the last 30 years.

• Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 15
• SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Fiber and Project Management
• If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess? The power to heal.

How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?

SCinet is a group of volunteers from all over the world who are tasked with building the world’s fastest network for the SC Conference. We provide a platform for researchers to show off and “play” with emerging technologies and prototype equipment in a production environment. Every year my family knows and anticipates my SC schedule. It’s kind of funny—SCinet is like an expected event on the calendar, right up there with Thanksgiving and Christmas.

What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?

I was recruited by colleagues at Sandia, Rick Maurer and Jim Brandt. Both knew I was looking for hands-on experience with fiber optics and a tangible example of how a network gets built from the ground up. The only experience I had handling fiber in my day job was connecting customer equipment to the local intermediate distribution frames (IDFs).

After several years of being a SCinet distributed network operations center (DNOC) captain, Mitch Kutzko from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who was the SC08 fiber team chair, asked me to take over leading the team. Mitch had done most of the tasks by himself, and it was a manually intensive process, so I suggested that the fiber team have more than one chair to lead the planning efforts. My first fiber team co-lead at SC09 in Portland, Oregon, was Warren Birch from the Army Research Laboratory.

I continue to volunteer with SCinet because this opportunity to learn new skills and network with professionals in my field is truly like no other. I get to work with colleagues from more than 80 organizations, learn from great minds, develop lifelong relationships, and, of course, have a great time while working hard to deliver SCinet. Over the years, these relationships have turned into friendships and colleagues I can count on for help in my day job.

It is very rewarding to collaborate with others on delivering a fast and reliable network for researchers to use at the SC Conference, especially when each year you want to incorporate newer technologies and experiment with network designs. Even though I have been on the fiber team for 15 years, there are new challenges to overcome each year and I look forward to tackling them.

Tell us about your SCinet team this year and what you are responsible for.

I am co-chair of the fiber team with Julie Locke from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Along with a team of volunteers, we provide fiber connections from the SCinet main distribution frame (MDF) to the exhibitor booths, by way of aerial and floor installs which traverse the main SCinet Network Operations Center, and supportive floor DNOCs. Depending on the equipment and architectural design for the year, we use different types of fiber and/or connection types.

What advice do you have for someone who is learning about SCinet for the first time and considering volunteering?

The fiber team is a great place to start as a volunteer because there is no prerequisite skill set or technical experience. Everything you need to know about the job tasks is provided in training before you arrive, as well as on the first day of setup at the convention center. As the setup progresses and the SC Conference show floor opens, you learn everything from how to repair broken thresholds to troubleshooting why a booth doesn’t have internet access. We all throw on our Sherlock hats, don our testing equipment, and methodically search for the issue. Sometimes it is an incorrect switch patch, other times it is broken fiber. Whatever the reason may be, it is always a rewarding experience to solve these problems and provide SC exhibitors access to the world’s fastest temporary network.

In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?

I have played soccer a couple times a week for about 28 years. At times I played with my older daughter and younger brother, until my younger daughter’s softball activities became a priority for me—which was something I loved trading in for. I enjoyed playing soccer because of the teamwork and camaraderie. The same reasons I enjoy volunteering with SCinet. Now, I do fun runs, refurbish furniture, stitchery, reading, and traveling. Actually, I enjoy doing most anything every day and especially if my family is involved!

Learn more about SCinet.

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.

Shannon Champion, director of networking at PIER Group, is a volunteer on this year’s SCinet wireless team. Due to the virtual nature of SC20, we will not be building the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure that our attendees have to come to expect as part of their SC experience. This feature aims to spotlight the dedicated volunteers and generous contributors whose tireless efforts and enthusiasm have helped shape the SC experience over the last 30 years.

• Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 2
• SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Switch/Route support for the Faucet network at SC19, and wireless team volunteer at SC20.
• If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess? Immortality. It would be great to see where we go and what we can achieve.

How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?

SCinet is a group of leading-edge architects, engineers, and researchers that help facilitate the advancement of research. As a volunteer representing PIER Group, I work closely with the SCinet team to implement and support a best-in-class network allowing critical and leading-edge research to be accomplished, helping advancement of research across the country.

What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?

In my role with PIER Group, I focus on current and future networking technologies and aligning those technologies with each of our research and education clients. My day job includes in-depth collaboration with all of our network manufacturers, in-depth collaboration with our customers architects and engineers, and final approval of all customer design and implementation recommendations.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with the research and education community for more than two decades. I get to work closely with network architects and engineers across higher education and high performance computing. Many of my peers from the community have volunteered with SCinet over the years, and have always encouraged us to participate as well. I personally appreciate the opportunity to work and collaborate with a talented group of networking colleagues from academia, government, and industry.

Tell us about your SCinet team this year and what you are responsible for.

I am part of the team that is responsible for the wireless network for the SC conference. In a typical year, the wireless network connectivity is set up for conference workshops and tutorials, conference committee rooms, exhibit floor, the hallways, and other public spaces. For SC20, we had committed to providing all the necessary wireless hardware and licensing to support SCinet, as well as deploy an engineering team to assist with installing and supporting the network during the conference.

In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?

I enjoy traveling and sailing when I have time.

Learn more about SCinet.

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.

Greg Veldman, senior storage administrator at Purdue University, is this year’s chair of the SCinet DevOps team, and a member of the SCinet power team. Due to the virtual nature of SC20, we will not be building the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure that our attendees have to come to expect as part of their SC experience. This feature aims to spotlight the dedicated volunteers and generous contributors whose tireless efforts and enthusiasm have helped shape the SC experience over the last 30 years.

• Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 7
• SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Network Security, DevOps (formerly IT Services), and Power
• If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess? The ability to see the future.

How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?

SCinet is the world’s fastest temporary network, existing only for a brief period each November to help the SC Conference demonstrate what is state-of-the-art in the fields of high-performance computing and networking. I am part of a behind-the-scenes team that spends “a year planning, a month building, a week operating, and a day tearing down” this network, as the SCinet adage goes.

What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?

I attended my first SC Conference 15 years ago and was a participant in a friendly HPC competition known as the Bandwidth Challenge. The competition utilized SCinet and that is how I came to know of the network. My curiosity about just what was involved in building such a world-class network each year led to a conversation with a work colleague who was volunteering with SCinet at the time. He suggested I should volunteer with the team behind building SCinet and introduced me to my first volunteer role with the network security team.

For my second year volunteering with SCinet, I transferred to the IT services team, which was later combined with the measurement team, and became known as the DevOps team.

The best part of SCinet is getting to work with a team of extremely talented and dedicated engineers to solve some very complex technical challenges and expand my technical skills, and the spirit of camaraderie and friendship that exists within the SCinet team.

Tell us about your SCinet team this year and what you are responsible for.

I like to say that the DevOps team is essentially three teams merged into one. We’re part software development, part general IT services, and part measurement and monitoring. Most of our year is spent wrangling the software and infrastructure tools other teams need to be successful, including the SCinet intranet which is the main network planning tool that we’ve designed and written completely in-house. Exhibitors may know this tool as the connection request system (CRS), but that’s only one user experience of a much larger and more complex entity. The DevOps team also manages SCinet’s year-round IT presence, including our websites, mailing lists, accounts, and various other services that SCinet uses.

Immediately prior to the start of the SC Conference, specifically during SCinet’s staging and setup periods, our focus turns toward network services such as domain name system (DNS), dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), and network time protocol (NTP), all of which we install and manage for SCinet. Finally, when the conference swings into full gear, we transition to monitoring the production network, deploying tools that can alert SCinet engineers to potential problems, and generating the various network graphics and charts that are displayed all around the show floor.

In addition to being a DevOps team lead this year, I’m also a member of the SCinet power team which is responsible for making sure all physical SCinet locations at the conference have appropriate electrical connections, and sufficient capacity, to power all the gear deployed.

The SCinet DevOps team has been working hard since January in preparation for SC20. What is one accomplishment that you are proud of?

One of our big efforts this year, which is new for SC20, is the addition of centrally-supported cloud services to the list of tools available to SCinet and the SC Conference planners. I’ve personally been hard at work behind the scenes to help deploy these services, including making sure appropriate security settings are in place, appropriate access is provisioned for new people who join the team, and integrating the services with our existing accounts management and automation processes. It’s rewarding to see all that work come together to provide a new service, one which has proved particularly useful this year as we’ve all had to collaborate online much more.

In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?

I’ve always enjoyed fixing and making things, and most weekends you can find me at work doing some sort of repair or enhancement to our house or yard. I’ve been into woodworking since I was in high school, and in the last couple of years have been getting into metalworking, including teaching myself how to weld. I also enjoy teaching my kids how to do some basic tasks with me in my workshop.

Learn more about SCinet.

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.

Soledad Antelada Toledano, cybersecurity engineer with the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, is this year’s co-chair of the SCinet network security team, and also co-chair of the SCinet Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) team.

Due to the virtual nature of SC20, we will not be building the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure that our attendees have to come to expect as part of their SC experience. This feature aims to spotlight the dedicated volunteers and generous contributors whose tireless efforts and enthusiasm have helped shape the SC experience over the last 30 years.

• Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 4
• SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Network Security
• If you could be a superhero, what power would you possess? I am a superhero 🙂

How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?

The SC Conference is held once a year in the U.S. to showcase the latest technology advancements of the biggest and fastest supercomputers in the world. To give support to the conference and the supercomputer demos that are performed during the show week, a group of volunteers build the biggest network in the world every year at the conference. That network is called SCinet and it is a state-of-the-art model and vision of the future of networks. The network takes a year to design, a month to build, and a week to operate during the SC Conference. More than 200 volunteers are needed to build SCinet and make networking dreams come true!

What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?

I was honored to receive a WINS award in 2017 which fully funded my participation to join the SCinet network security team. The NSF-funded WINS program was developed as a means for addressing the prevalent gender gap that exists in information technology particularly in the fields of network engineering and high performance computing. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has continued to support and ensure my participation in the following years since my first participation.

You are co-chair of SCinet security this year. Tell us more about your team and responsibilities.

This is my fourth year with the SCinet security team. I was the network security co-chair for SC19 in Denver, Colorado, and I’m in the same role for SC20. Along with my co-chair, Nathaniel Mendoza from Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), we are responsible for assembling a team of vendors that provides the hardware and software needed for building the security stack; assembling the team of volunteer engineers; closing the gender gap; designing a state-of-the-art network security architecture; hosting regular meetings with the team and vendors; and deciding strategies for tapping, distributing, and monitoring the SCinet network traffic and Network Research Exhibitors (NRE) experiments.

The SCinet security team has been working hard since January in preparation for SC20. What is one accomplishment that you are proud of?

One accomplishment I feel proud about is the increased participation of women engineers on this year’s SCinet security team: half of the engineers on our 14-person team are women! This is a first for the SCinet security team, and builds on an organizational commitment to increase the participation of women with technical backgrounds on SCinet teams. I’m encouraged by our efforts to attract talented women engineers and hope that they will find their time with SCinet to be a rewarding and worthwhile experience.

In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?

I like traveling, learning new things, and getting to know different people and cultures. I’m also a big beach goer 🙂

Learn more about SCinet and Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS).

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.

Carlos Rojas-Torres, network engineer at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), is this year’s co-chair of the SCinet wireless team. Carlos also holds cross-appointments with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and Front Range GigaPop. His SCinet volunteer experience started back in 2012 and includes past participation across four technical teams.

• Years as a SCinet Volunteer: 6 years in total (2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020)
• SCinet Team(s) with which you’ve participated: Fiber, Wide Area Network, Edge, and Wireless
• Which superhero power would you possess? Flight

How would you explain SCinet and what you do as a SCinet volunteer to a family member or friend?

We are a group of volunteers from around the world in charge of planning and building the fastest network in the world for the SC conference. It’s also where the newest and most exciting network technologies are going to be on display.

What was your path to start volunteering with SCinet? What keeps you coming back as a SCinet volunteer each year?

I was first invited to participate in 2012, where I joined the fiber team under the leadership of Lance Hutchinson and Annette Kitajima from Sandia National Laboratories. I was hooked right away! Coming back is a no-brainer; the learning experience, the exposure to the newest and latest technologies, and the friendships that develop over time make SCinet a really unique and valuable experience.

Tell us about your SCinet team this year and what you are responsible for.

I am co-chair of the wireless team with Loren Adams from Georgia State University. Our team is responsible for the wireless network for the SC conference, and provides connectivity for conference workshops and tutorials, conference committee rooms, the exhibit floor, hallways and other public spaces. As a team lead, my main responsibilities are to co-manage a diverse team of talented volunteers, each with their own areas of expertise, and to ensure a safe and rewarding experience for everyone involved.

We’re all seeing and feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our world. How are you keeping your team engaged in the planning process for SC20?

The truth is, keeping the team engaged is not a hard task; the sense of belonging, responsibility and affinity is what is keeping the team moving forward. We know we are part of something very special, and we have the opportunity to contribute to the SC conference in 2020 and beyond. That being said, as a team lead it’s important to facilitate open, honest, and inclusive communications with our team. We are offering virtual opportunities for our team members to volunteer this year because we don’t want anyone to feel excluded from participation.

In addition to volunteering with SCinet, what do you do for fun?

I love spending time with my family, hiking, biking, playing racquetball, snowboarding, and when possible, traveling to new places.

Learn more about SCinet at SC.

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.

During the week of SC, SCinet becomes the most powerful and advanced network on Earth, connecting the SC community to the world. Kevin Hayden, Senior Network Engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, is this year’s SCinet Chair. He is tasked with leading a team of expert volunteers from across the HPC community with designing, building, and administering the cutting-edge SCinet infrastructure in Atlanta, GA.

We are all witnessing how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting our world as we know it. How has managing the team of volunteers and planning for SCinet been during this unprecedented time?

SC20 will be a year to remember. When I attended my first SC20 planning meeting back in November 2018, we had no idea a pandemic would change the course of history.

The general committee and sponsoring societies have been planning SC20 for several years, while SCinet’s planning efforts span one year. During that time, we visit the conference location twice to survey and plan where equipment will be placed, how it will be delivered and moved on site, and design details you just can’t see on a 2-dimensional drawing of the physical space.

Most convention centers aren’t equipped with enough external fiber optic connectivity to allow us to bring in as many wide area network connections needed to deliver over 4 terabits per second of network connectivity. With this type of bandwidth, it would take roughly 42 seconds to download the entire Netflix HD movie library! This high-speed connectivity is needed to support both the attendees with their wifi experience, as well as the researchers and technologists who partake in HPC demonstrations on the SC exhibit hall floor.

One challenge we are currently navigating is how to survey the pathway from the Georgia World Congress Center to the local telco hotel where our connectivity will come from. That said, I have been impressed with the team’s resilience and continued dedication. We are doubling our planning and design work to accommodate for variations, but we have a great team that’s willing to go to great lengths to make sure SC20 is successful, no matter what the final conference looks like.

Tell us how you got involved with SCinet and your path to becoming SCinet Chair.

In 2005, Linda Winkler, a senior network engineer and work colleague, was hosting the SC05 planning meeting at Argonne National Laboratory. At that time I was in charge of a team of structured cabling installers at Argonne and I was a certified fiber optics installer.

Linda asked me if I would be interested in going to Seattle to install and repair fiber optic cables on the exhibit floor. I had no real idea what SC was or what I was expected to do.

I also had no idea just how much work and planning went into SCinet, and that my first time at the SC Conference would be both challenging and exciting. I had initially thought I would only be there to install the fiber, so I planned my travel for Sunday through Friday, because that’s when the fiber was supposed to be installed by.

On Monday morning, I made my way to the convention center with no real plan other than to help install fiber. Two hours later I was in a boom lift (because I was certified to use one) 35 feet above the exhibit hall floor, hanging fiber cables from the ceiling to support the exhibitor booths. During the day we would put in long hours from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., then go out to local venues with the volunteers on our team. The days were long, but the time flew by. It was amazing how many great friendships I made and maintained over the years just because of those five days in Seattle 15 years ago.

Over the years, I became more and more involved with the fiber team. I took on additional responsibilities such as creating the fiber design using AutoCAD, ordering equipment, and asking companies to donate equipment and tools that would be used in helping us install the network.

I was asked to co-chair the fiber team at SC10 with Annette Kitajima from Sandia National Laboratory. I remained fiber co-chair until SC15, when I was asked to take on the edge/commodity networks team chair role and fill in for Jeff Schwab from Purdue University, who would later become SCinet chair.

By 2015, commodity networking was more in alignment with my work at Argonne, so it was a very good fit and added great value to further validate my participation with SCinet. I remained in that position until 2018, when I was selected by former SCinet chairs and the SC20 general chair to lead the SCinet team at SC20.

SCinet is as much about the human network as it is about the physical SC network. What three words would you use to describe the SCinet team and why?

Incredible. I always say I am not the smartest person in the room (not even close) when at a SCinet meeting. These brilliant engineers can troubleshoot and fix anything thrown at them, document how they did it, and then share that information with anyone having similar problems. Many of the systems they work on at SC are still in the prototype phase of production, and they can still get in there with their colleagues and solve issues.

Family. I thought I was just going to work at some computer conference and met the most wonderful people.They say you can’t choose your family, but I say SCinet has become my family. They have cried with me and gotten me through some very tough times, and can always be counted on for a good hearty laugh. Most are willing to do absolutely anything for another team member, both personally and professionally. I have made such amazing friendships in my 15 years at SC.

Dedicated. There is no challenge too big for this team, whether it’s COVID-19 this year, federal budget cuts back in 2012, or equipment shortages in most years. SCinet will always come through and make the conference a great success. Our team leads include some of the most sought after engineers in the world, but did you know that we also have a veterinarian, a French language school owner, and a molecular geneticist and microbiologist on the SCinet team this year? While many of our volunteers are funded by their home institution to support their participation at SCinet, some of our volunteers self-fund their participation.

What is your most memorable SCinet moment and why?

My first wife passed away from a long battle with breast cancer just four days before SCinet staging was set to begin for SC14. My then mother-in-law was helping me out at the house and was watching my children. She suggested I go to the conference for a few days to decompress. I booked a ticket and headed to New Orleans. I was so happy to see my SCinet family and had the opportunity to have some joy when it was most needed. I will never forget the hugs and words of support from my closest friends.

Over the years, the moments are starting to blur together into one amazing moment. It would be hard to narrow it down to just one. I love working with the people of SC, learning about bleeding edge technologies, and challenging myself with the issues that arise while working to ensure the SC Conference is successful. Every year there is such excitement around getting the network up and running, usually with just moments to spare, and then the planning for teardown begins.

Learn more about SCinet at SC.

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Sara Aly, SC20 Communications, SCinet Liaison

Sara Aly is a communications manager at Internet2. This is her third year volunteering with the SCinet communications team.