The ECP core mission is to develop a capable exascale computing ecosystem that accelerates scientific discovery and supports addressing critical challenges in energy, earth systems, materials, data, and national security. The very nature of this mission has drawn a wide range of talented and successful scientists with diverse backgrounds to work together in new ways toward this goal. In this panel discussion, we build on lessons learned from the experiences of the PETSc, Trilinos, xSDK, and E4S as viewed from the lens of “Team of Teams.” We consider how, why, and when each of these distributed teams may and may not function as Teams of Teams and when applying Team of Teams principles might benefit. We present strategies centered around developing engaged and productive virtual software teams and offer a deeper dive into these communities. We explore how developing a capable exascale ecosystem depends on meeting technical, social, and cultural challenges.

Panelists

• Todd Munson (Argonne National Laboratory)
• Jim Willenbring (Sandia National Laboratories)
• Ulrike Yang (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

Moderators

• Elaine Raybourn (Sandia National Laboratories)
• Reed Milewicz (Sandia National Laboratories)
• Miranda Mundt (Sandia National Laboratories)
• Benjamin Sims (Los Alamos National Laboratory)

Panelist Bio

Todd Munson is a Senior Computational Scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He is the Director of the PETSc/TAO ECP, where his technical interest is in scalable numerical optimization methods for the high performance computers. He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2006.

Moderator Bios

Elaine M. Raybourn is a social scientist in the Statistics and Human Systems Group (Applied Cognitive Science) at Sandia National Laboratories. Her research focuses on virtual teams, methods for software productivity, immersive virtual environments, scientific visualization, and transmedia learning. She was the SC21 Scientific Visualization & Data Analytics Showcase Chair. Elaine has worked remotely for a combined total of 15 years while at Sandia National Laboratories: from the UK as a guest researcher at British Telecom; Germany (Fraunhofer FIT) and France (INRIA) as a Fellow of the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM), and most recently as Sandia’s Institutional PI for the Exascale Computing Project (ECP) Interoperable Design of Extreme-scale Application Software (IDEAS) productivity project. Elaine leads PSIP and the ECP panel series Strategies for Working Remotely.

Reed Milewicz is a computer scientist and software engineering researcher in the Department of Software Engineering and Research at Sandia National Laboratories. His research focuses on developing better practices, processes, and tools to improve software development in the scientific domain. He leads software science research efforts within his department and is a member of the Interoperable Design of Extreme-Scale Application Software (IDEAS) project, where he is part of the Productivity and Sustainability Improvement Planning (PSIP) team.

Benjamin Sims is a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is a sociologist with research interests in scientific collaboration, software development, social networks, organizational knowledge, and repair and maintenance of infrastructures.