Connections with LBNL and LLNL

Additional opportunities for research and educational development would be provided by building on the existing strong associations with the two national laboratories closest to UC Davis, LLNL and LBNL. In collaboration with the campus deans, CS&E would be responsible for the development of mutually beneficial efforts like the ones listed in the following.

• Faculty Recruitment. The recruitment of CS&E faculty with joint appointments with either LLNL or LBNL should be fully exploited.
• Formal Academic Collaboration. The creation of formal academic connections and collaborations between CS&E and computational research centers at LLNL and LBNL, e.g., the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) at LLNL and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at LBNL, should be enabled.
• Computational Resources. The campus should foster the joint development of computational resources, such as high-performance computing infrastructure, high-speed optical networks, or massive data storage and data visualization environments.
• Student Fellowships. LLNL and LBNL should, in close collaboration with UC Davis, consider the expansion of student fellowship opportunities, such as the UC Davis-LLNL Graduate Student Employeeship Program, to foster more joint supervision of doctoral students.

Potential. Beginning with John von Neumann's work at LANL using early computers to solve differential equations, the national laboratories have been home to many of the largest computing facilities and leading programs in CS&E in the United States. A number of those major facilities and programs are now part of the national infrastructure in CS&E and involve university collaborations and outside access to computing resources at the Department of Energy (DoE) laboratories at Berkeley, Livermore, Los Alamos, Argonne, Oak Ridge, and elsewhere. The University of California is a contractor for the DoE and operates three of these Laboratories: LBNL, LLNL, LANL. At UC Davis we therefore have a major opportunity to exploit a special relationship with those institutions to enhance the CS&E Initiative. In particular, the caliber of scientists and engineers we want to recruit to the faculty positions associated with this Initiative will find these positions much more attractive if they are accompanied by the chance of a close association with one of the laboratories. The future of CS&E at UC Davis is dependent in large measure on our faculty's ability to attack the large-scale problems that characterize modern applications of computing in science and engineering. The forefront of research in almost all areas is focusing on complex systems in lieu of the simple models of earlier efforts. The areas of multi-component materials, complex biological systems, climate and global systems, total simulation of combustion engines, total engineering modeling of automobiles, and many other problems are emerging as ``big science'' for which both large teams of researchers and major resources are necessary for progress. Even computer science research itself benefits from proximity to this scale of computational application, where, for example, the large data sets now being used in visualization and imaging drive a new class of algorithms and approaches. Opportunities. At UC Davis we already have the mechanism in place for joint appointments between any of the three UC-operated national laboratories and the campus itself. There are faculty currently holding such appointments with various fractions of their positions divided between UC and national laboratories. We even have a department resident at LLNL, Applied Science, and various disciplinary centers which encourage such appointments. In addition, a number of faculty have DoE contracts and are thereby naturally connected to programs at the UC-operated laboratories with which they collaborate. The national laboratories also benefit from this relationship. Many of the best researchers are more comfortable with the more open and free research environment that a university faculty position can provide them. It is an advantage to the national laboratories to be able to recruit such people to become part of their research programs on the part-time basis that a joint appointment allows. In fact, there are many examples where primary intellectual leadership is exercised in national laboratories by faculty members from the UC campuses. As part of the CS&E Initiative, it is therefore strongly recommended that many of the associated faculty positions be leveraged by joint appointments with the UC-operated national laboratories. These joint appointments will need to be negotiated by the deans and department chairs involved in recruiting these faculty, and such arrangements will have to be made in advance in order to have both institutions agree to share the costs of the positions and to jointly recruit candidates. Barriers and the Need for Changing the University-Laboratory Interface. Typically, a UC campus and a UC-operated national laboratory in which joint appointments are held share the costs of the faculty salary and benefits. These arrangements allow faculty to gain access to both the high-end computing resources they need and the stimulus of large teams working on complex problems. They do not, however, always function smoothly. The problems originate from the requirement to serve two masters, from different and often incompatible cultures. The principal difficulty is that the teaching and service (and some research) activities of a faculty member in his or her university position may not be of interest to the national laboratory, and conversely the service, program development, and administrative activities associated with a laboratory position may be of little relevance to the merit review of a university professor. In effect, if a faculty member with a 50% appointment initiates and manages a large research program funded by the DoE in one of the national laboratories, few of the associated administrative and national service activities are relevant to tenure and promotion. Moreover, if the same faculty member publishes work in areas not related to his or her DoE research, serves on university committees, and develops a program funded by NSF, none of those activities affects performance evaluations in the national laboratory. The reduced teaching load and lessened ability to perform service activities in the university that must accompany a joint appointment may become additional liabilities for the faculty member. As a result, it is difficult to see how a faculty member's career, especially that of an assistant professor, is not put at risk by a joint appointment with a national laboratory--even though both appointments are within the UC system and are actually with the same employer. It can be foreseen that some CS&E faculty hires, most likely at the senior level, would be quite interested in using a joint appointment with a national laboratory to take on a leadership role in the applied laboratory environment by heading groups of professionals and defining major research programs. Currently, this type of organizational or professional competence is not valued by our academic merit and promotion process to a large degree. Joint appointments with national laboratories would be more attractive to faculty if the university evaluation process were to value the laboratory work component more, which, in turn, would excite a jointly appointed faculty member to execute a true leadership role at the laboratory. One should also keep in mind the actual leverage of university and national laboratory finances that would result from this type of joint appointment. If UC Davis is to avoid missing a major opportunity in developing this Initiative, the campus must move to address these fundamental structural problems. At stake is the ability to effectively extend the number of faculty positions in the Initiative. An attractive mechanism for joint appointments, with a single set of criteria for merit evaluation, and career development advantages in place of the current disadvantages, will ensure an opportunity for UC Davis to become a major player in this field almost overnight.