Prof. Geraint Lewis, University of Sydney, and Prof. Chris Power, University of Western Australia, capture some interesting ideas in their commentary recently published in The Conversation, titled The Challenge of the Modern Scientist is to Avoid Career Suicide.

The modern scientist today needs many skills which were unknown in the time when our Universities and research organisations were formed.  Our ability to capture data has out-paced our ability to process the huge volumes of information.  While increasingly powerful computing systems address some of the issues, the real value is in the combination of skilled computing practitioners and large HPC systems.  

With larger and more complex science experiments being undertaken, the scientific researchers should be allowed the space and time to carefully consider and process the results – rather than spending most of their time wrangling code and compute systems. It presents exciting opportunities for HPC providers that look beyond just the supply of compute and add user-value with software and algorithm support, onboarding, QC, and data management services.