Profile: Alan Chalker, Ph.D.

Meet Alan Chalker, Ph.D. Director of Strategic Programs at The Ohio Supercomputer Center.

Name: Alan Chalker, Ph.D.

Job: Director of Strategic Programs at The Ohio Supercomputer Center

City: Columbus

Hometown: Hilliard

Q: What do you do at the OSC?
The Ohio Supercomputer Center is a shared statewide resource that provides supercomputing services and computational science expertise to Ohio researchers in academia and industry.

As a centralized asset, OSC provides students, scientists, engineers and clinicians with far better computational resources than their organizations could acquire and maintain on their own. OSC empowers Ohio researchers to new innovations and discoveries; partners with Ohio industries to use supercomputing and computational science as a competitive force; and collaborates with Ohio’s colleges and universities to educate Ohio’s workforce.  

OSC is a member of the OH-TECH Consortium, which is the technology and information division of the Ohio Department of Higher Education.

Q: What’s a problem that you are working to solve? 
High performance computing (HPC) has led to remarkable advances in science and engineering and has become an indispensable tool for research. Unfortunately, HPC use and adoption by many researchers is hindered by the complex way in which these resources are accessed. Indeed, while the web has become the dominant access mechanism for remote computing services, it has not for HPC.  

Scientists accessing HPC resources today typically need advanced knowledge of Linux, familiarity with command-line interfaces and installation and configuration of custom client software. These additional requirements create an accessibility gap that for many scientists serves as an impediment to adopting HPC for their research. Removing, or even reducing this impediment to HPC use, will immediately increase the productiveness of computationally intensive research. 

At OSC, we’ve been working on a solution to this problem for over a decade, via our Open OnDemand platform (openondemand.org), an innovative, open-source, web-based project for accessing HPC services that removes these intricacies, and in so doing reduces time to science for researchers by simplifying access to HPC resources.

With OnDemand, a user interacts with a set of web-based applications (“apps”) for files, job control, cluster access and interactive computing.  Open OnDemand is now deployed at over 200 HPC centers all over the world, and used everyday by thousands of scientists and engineers.

With OnDemand we are both lowering the barrier to entry for using HPC, as well as broadening the base of research domains that can easily make use of HPC resources.

Q: What’s a lesson you’ve learned that has helped shaped your work? 
For many things in business, and in life, I’ve found the saying ‘better is the enemy of good enough’ to be extremely helpful. When I was younger, I was often a perfectionist or idealist. But then the real world taught me there is never enough time, or knowledge, or money, to make everything perfect.  

This manifests itself in terminology such as “Minimum Viable Product” for “Lean Startups”, or ‘Under Promise and Over Deliver”. In a tech based business, the ecosystem and corresponding client needs change so fast that it’s often impossible to provide the perfect solution to a problem.  

I often find myself uttering this phrase at staff meetings when we are spinning our wheels trying to optimize some sort of process or procedure, and it tends to collectively snap us back to the ‘real world’ and realize we are doing what engineers often do in terms of over-engineering something.

Q: What’s a trend in technology or innovation that you believe doesn’t get enough attention? 
Data ownership rights. Many people are somewhat aware of issues around things like privacy and access to Personal Health Information and Student Educational Records, which are covered via HIPAA and FERPA laws respectively.  

But questions around data ownership rights extend so much further than that. For example, what about web search history, or library patron records, or electricity usage records?  

Everyone in both their personal and work lives generate so much data doing everyday things like browsing the web or watching tv and it’s being scooped up, collected, sold, and analyzed by many different organizations. Do you own that data?  Does your employer or service provider own it? Can it be monetized somehow? Can seemingly innocuous, discrete pieces of data be tied together to paint a more detailed, private picture of your life?  

In the past few years, society has begun grappling with many of these issues as a result of various data breaches and political scandals, but we’ve only looked at the tip of the iceberg so to speak.

Q: What’s one moonshot idea that could help make Ohio a world leader in technology and innovation? 
True broadband everywhere and for everyone. The digital divide is far too prevalent in our society and inherently means so many of our fellow citizens can’t do so many things that are basic to modern day living, even more so in our current socially-distant environment, be it apply for a job, shop online, connect with friends and family, or purse an education.  

Previous generations tackled major infrastructure projects such as creating a network of roads or the electricity distribution system, both of which reach every corner of the state. Having access to fast and affordable internet access is a vision many companies aspire to deliver on, but unfortunately isn’t a reality for far too many people in rural or lower socio-economic areas.  

With widespread broadband, the reach of any one person is nearly unlimited, which provides that many more opportunities for advancement and innovation.

Q: What’s a recent book, podcast or news story that you found interesting? 
I’m a huge fan of the Stuff You Should Know podcast. My kids enjoy listening to it as well, and it inevitably results in interesting discussions around the kitchen table.  

The co-hosts have been doing this for over a decade and cover an amazing range of topics, ranging from the mundane like “How Peanut Butter Works” to the abstract like “How Existential Risks Work”. I particularly enjoyed their recent one about Rodney Dangerfield, as I hadn’t known anything about his rise to fame and personal life.

Q: What's your favorite place in Ohio? 
The campus of Ohio State University, particularly in a typical fall. Between the amazing events and people surrounding home Buckeye football games, to the wide eyes of incoming freshman wandering around campus with endless possibilities in their dreams, to the general hustle and bustle of all of the faculty and staff going about their business, be it research, or teaching, or maintenance – OSU is so vibrant with energy and encapsulates progress and hope in general for me.

Q: What makes Ohio special to you?  
From a general perspective, it’s the embodiment of mid-western values and ethics. Growing up, I lived in 4 other states at various times (I won’t name them to avoid starting a inter-state conflict , and have visited nearly all of the remaining 45 at some point, but chose to return to Ohio to establish my career and family life.  

A big part of that decision was due to the people here.  Ohioans in aggregate are the right mix of so many things you can define a group with, be it along social, political, educational, religious, or economic spectrums.

And on a minor specific note, Ohio is special to me because of a certain building in Southington Township in Trumbull County. Chalker High School is named after a direct ancestor of mine, Newton Chalker. And while I never lived in the area, nor have any Chalker Wildcat gear to wear, a small piece of heart is of course rooting for their teams when they play!

Connect with Alan on LinkedIn.

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