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Managing Large, Distributed Projects: Best Practices and Challenges

Managing Large, Distributed Projects: Best Practices and Challenges. Vipin Kumar. University of Minnesota kumar@cs.umn.edu. Challenges in Interdisciplinary Collaborations. Differences in vocabulary (aka. Language Barrier)

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Managing Large, Distributed Projects: Best Practices and Challenges

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  1. Managing Large, Distributed Projects: Best Practices and Challenges Vipin Kumar University of Minnesota kumar@cs.umn.edu

  2. Challenges in Interdisciplinary Collaborations • Differences in vocabulary (aka. Language Barrier) • Ask a computer scientist, a statistician, and a climate scientist what a “model” is and you will get three very different answers • Try again with “prediction” or with “system” and so on • Differences in how research is conducted (aka. Culture Clash) • Computer science operates on a deadline-driven publication cycle, with frequent peer-reviewed conference papers • Climate science operates on a task-oriented publication cycle, where journal papers are generally reserved for major discoveries • Differences in tools and methods • Computer scientists are familiar with C/C++, Python, and Matlab and generally store datasets in plain-text files • Climate scientists are familiar with GrADS, Panoply, NCO, R, Matlab, and generally store datesets in netCDF, HDF, GRIB files • There is a significant learning curve • In some aspects we have reached here • But in others we are still down here

  3. Management and Collaboration - Best Practices • Interdisciplinary Learning & Research Environment • Students co-advised by advisors of multiple disciplines • Students across disciplines share lab space and interact frequently • Topic-specific reading groups reinforce important concepts • Bi-Weekly Virtual Meetings (WebEx) • Conference call + shared desktop environment • High-level project management • Technical presentations • Annual Workshop • Bringing together computer scientists, statisticians, climate scientists, etc. • Promoting interaction and feedback between the different disciplines

  4. Evidence and impact of collaboration • Research is being published in both computer science and climate science venues • Most of our papers contain co-authors from various institutions and disciplines • New connections between researchers are being established • Computer science team members are frequently invited to speak at various climate science venues

  5. Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts? • Different possible interpretations of “Parts” and “Whole” • Parts = Disciplines of climate science, computer science, etc.; Whole = Inter-disciplinary field of climate informatics • Parts= Individual researchers; Whole = Multi-author papers (and underlying research ideas) • Parts= Individual institutions; Whole = Society and its awareness of climate change impacts

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