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HSF Weekly Meeting #170, 29 August, 2019

Present/Contributors: Graeme Stewart, Eduardo Rodrigues, Serhan Mete, Torre Wenaus, Pere Mato, Liz Sexton-Kennedy, Gloria Corti, Heather Gray, Michel Jouvin, Stefan Roiser, Sudhir Malik, Daniel Elvira, David Lange

News, general matters

• ECFA Presentation Feedback
  • The talk was well received (it’s on YouTube), as lot of positive feedback from senior ECFA people.
  • Discussion focused on C++ (is it still the right language for us? can it attract new talent to our field, espc. from CompSci?); how to work in wider software ecosystems, data analysis and ML; European Open Science Cloud for resource delivery (to multiple communities, not just HEP); how to manage legacy software and evolve/rewrite for new architectures - how do we do this as a community?
• IRIS Support Letter
  • Supporting students to come to CERN for a summer.
  • Not funded last time, but encouraged to re-apply this year.
  • See attachment in Indico.
  • Approved.

Google Summer of Code 2019

• Remember to submit your final student evaluations by September 2.

Google Season of Docs

• We got one technical writer for ROOT.

Activity and Working Group Updates

Detector Simulation

• Just restarting now…

Reconstruction and Software Triggers

• At the last coordination meeting, we floated the idea of involving other communities (dark matter, GW, etc.) to understand what their software needs are and if there are points in common
  • We have the chance to do it “live” (+Vidyo) at this meeting: https://jenas-2019.lal.in2p3.fr as we could get a room for the Wednesday afternoon after the end of the workshop, and it could make sense to do it HSF-wide rather than just reco-trigger-wide.
  • E.g. we could have a talk by one of the members of ESCAPE https://projectescape.eu (Elena Cuoco) who is keen to collaborate on tools and wants to know more about HSF.
  • Other ideas? Opinions?
    • General HSF overview would be a good idea.
    • Ask these other communities about their challenges.
  • Is this specifically Reco & Software Trigger?
    • Not exclusively, but it was a direct contact with Caterina.
• Next reco & sw trigger meeting on Sept 4th, on ALICE/LHCb trigger overview.

Software Tools

• Not much activity over the summer, coming back online…

PyHEP

• PyHEP 2019 workshop in Abingdon, UK, 16-18 October:

  • Skeleton agenda available at https://indico.cern.ch/e/PyHEP2019. A highlight of which is the following:

  • 1) A keynote presentation on the PyViz - open source visualization tools for Python - project, given by Philipp Rudiger, a member of the developers team.
  • 2) Topical sessions on e.g. histogramming and statistics, including a talk and hands-on tutorials.
  • 3) Lightning talks from participants.
  • 4) Presentations following up from topics discussed at PyHEP 2018.
• So far, 34 registrants out of 75 slots available.

• Note: partial travel support for some U.S. participants (in particular, students and early-career postdocs) may be available from the IRIS-HEP institute. Please contact Peter Elmer (Peter.Elmer@cern.ch) to enquire about details.

• 1st topical WG meeting on 11th September:
  • Topic is fitting tools - very relevant, various developments, lots of interest.
  • Agenda finalised, see https://indico.cern.ch/event/834210.
  • Two 20+10 minutes talks: one on zfit, another on Numpy-based Python fitting frameworks Astropy & Sherpa, from an astroparticle physicist.

Training

• Software Carpentry at CERN rescheduled to 27-29 Nov. since earlier dates (16-18 Oct) clash with PyHEP in Abingdon, U.K.
  • Thanksgiving Week, but this is EU focused.
• Graeme is working on booking rooms at CERN.
• Indico (prelim) - https://indico.cern.ch/event/834411/.
• Past training events - https://indico.cern.ch/category/11386/.
• Recent - USATLAS/FIRST-HEP Computing Bootcamp (LBNL) was great success- https://indico.cern.ch/event/816946/.
• We will ask for tutors to help - about 10 people to have a 1:5 ratio.

Event Delivery Forum

• Have had one meeting over the summer.

Packaging

• Next meeting Wednesday 11 September.

Frameworks

• Comment period has closed, Michel, Liz and Graeme will meet tomorrow.

Licensing

• Should we be progressing on this again? FastJet contact attempts seemed to go to /dev/null…
  • Current software isn’t even thread safe; there is some interest in rewriting this from the US side and will result in a more open license as it is the US policy.
  • Graeme, Liz, Michel will have an offline discussion on strategy.

Quantum Computing

• Quantum Future Hackathon at CERN, 18-20 October (https://indico.cern.ch/event/838035/)

Software Forum

• No meeting scheduled yet
• Less need for meetings now that the WGs are active and doing a very good job!

Workshops

Pre-CHEP (2-3 November)

• Many people have signed up for this, 130+.
• We are investigating having a more interactive session on Sunday. This seems like a good idea, but will be logistically tricky.
• Next planning meeting Tuesday 3 September, 17h.

Latin American Workshop on Software and Computing Challenges in HEP (Mexico, Nov 20-23)

• “First Latin American Workshop on Software and Computing Challenges in HEP” is confirmed for November 20-23rd in Mexico City. https://indico.cern.ch/event/813325/
  • Goal is for Latin American colleagues interested in S&C to partner with each other and with the international community (this may improve their funding opportunities).
    • This is also an opportunity for PIs in the international community to network and partner with Latin American institutions.
  • Registration will open September 1st. Some people associated with HSF have already confirmed participation (i.e. Sudhir Malik, Gordon Watts). There will also be participation of people from FNAL and CERN.
  • Announcements will be made through HSF lists and other avenues sometime next week.
  • More members of our international HSF community may be contacted by the scientific organizing committee to give presentations on the different areas described in the Roadmap (i.e. generators, simulation, reconstruction, trigger software, distributed computing, data management, etc.) Are there volunteers or interested parties?
  • One problem to resolve: the science budget situation in a few Latin American countries has deteriorated significantly in the last few months (you may know if you follow the news). Advice from HSF members on how to contact potential sponsors (HEP, industry) so that we have funds to pay for participants/speakers from Latin America will be welcome. A fund of the order of 10-20k would be of great help to improve the situation. Any ideas?
    • Will try to contact partners via OpenLab at CERN as one possibility.

Next HSF/WLCG Workshop

• 4-8 or 11-15 May 2020.
• We anticipate 3 hosting offers from:
  • DESY.
  • Sweden (Lund U and Umea).
  • University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest in Romania.
• Prospective hosts are going to make short presentations at the GDB in FNAL, 11 September (https://indico.fnal.gov/event/21232/). 9h30 FNAL time, 16h30 CERN.
• Comments can be taken at the GDB and at the HSF meeting the next day (12 September). Or email David, Graeme, Michel.
• Decision to be taken soon after that by organising committee.

AOB

• AIDA++ planning Open Meeting next Wednesday (4 September).
  • https://indico.cern.ch/event/838460/.
• No meeting next week (CERN holiday for Jeûne genevois), reconvene 12 September.
• The entry for the weekly meeting in the HSF calendar disappeared (oops!). It’s been recreated.

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