Position Details
Job Title:
CSIRO Undergraduate Vacation Scholarships – Scientific Computing
Reference No:
2201
Classification:
CSOF1.1
Stipend:
$1462.77 per fortnight
Location:
Please refer to the List of Projects at the end of this document
Tenure:
8 to 12 weeks from November 2015 to February 2016
Role Purpose:
The 2015/16 Vacation Scholarship Program is designed to provide students
with the opportunity to work on real-world problems in a leading R&D
organisation.
Participation in the Vacation Scholarship Program has influenced previous
scholarship holders in their choice of further study and future career options.
Many have gone on to pursue a PhD in CSIRO or to build a successful
research career within CSIRO, a university or industry.
Project
Description:
How to Apply:
Please refer to the list of Projects on the following pages of this document.
If you require further information please contact the person listed as the
contact for the project.
Please apply for this position online at www.csiro.au/careers
You will be required to:
1. select your top 2 research projects in order of preference;
2. submit a CV which includes:

the reasons why the research project/s you have selected are of
interest to you; and how your previous skills/knowledge and
experience meets the project requirements; and

an outline of your longer-term career aspirations and detail
how this program will help you achieve them.
3. upload your academic results.
Referees: Please ensure that your resume includes the name and contact
details of your academic supervisor and at least one other referee (work or
university).
If you experience difficulties applying online call 1300 984 220 and someone
will be able to assist you. Outside business hours please email: csirocareers@csiro.au.
Please do not email your application. Applications received via this method
may not be considered.
About CSIRO:
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
is Australia’s national science agency. At CSIRO we shape the future. We do
this by using science to solve real issues. Our research makes a difference to
industry, people and the planet.
Project
Number
IM&T01
Scientific Computing – Vacation Scholarships Project Details
Project Title
Jupyter Enhancement
Project Description
Jupyter is an open source, language agnostic development environment for scientific
computing and data science. The project will update and enhance the service currently
available within CSIRO to better integrate with and use the organisations high performance
and cloud computing environments.
Project Duties/Tasks




Familiarise with CSIRO's scientific and high performance computing facilities
Learn about Jupyter (https://jupyter.org/), Docker, Docker Swarm
Deploy a Jupyter Hub (https://github.com/jupyter/jupyterhub) service that makes
use of Docker Swarm to spawn Jupyter scientific computing environments across a
range of CSIRO HPC and cloud systems
Customise Jupyter to local requirements, potentially through extensions written in
Python and JavaScript
Relevant Fields of Study

Information Technology

Software Engineering

Computer Science
Location: Clayton, Melbourne
Contact: Sam Moskwa via phone on phone on (03) 9545 7845 or email
sam.moskwa@csiro.au
IM&T02
Project Title
Web based visualisation showcasing CSIRO’s National Facilities
Project Description
Develop a web based framework that allows for the display of CSIRO's National Facilities
For example, for CSIRO’s new research vessel the RV Investigator, the tool could present a
range of graphical information including
 Current location (if available) and planned route
 Experiment(s) underway
 Links to the latest photos/videos/sensor data
Similarly for the Parkes radio telescope it might show
 Current orientation
 Target source(s)
 Realtime view of incoming radio sources
Project Duties/Tasks




Develop a web based framework for interactive display of CSIRO’s National Facility
data
Using this framework, present data from a one National Facility in a visually
appealing way on the web
o e.g. If available, access real-time feed of telemetry and other data
Allow for some interaction, e.g. zoom to particular location, search for events
based on keywords, drill down into sensor information, view some data in 3D
Optionally select data from previous expeditions/events/experiments
Relevant Fields of Study

Information Technology

Software Engineering

Computer Science
Experience with modern programming languages, such as Python, JavaScript
Some exposure to tools such as WebGL, Bokeh, D3.js
Location: Clayton, Melbourne
Contact: Justin Baker via phone on (03) 9454 2012 or email justin.baker@csiro.au
IM&T03
Project Title
Self-serve deployment of scientific applications.
Project Description
The IM&T Scientific Computing group manages a comprehensive software portfolio that
covers a range of research activities, such as materials modelling, computational fluid
dynamics simulation, DNA sequencing and application development. While most of the
software are available on our shared facilities, some client workflows require the use of
local computers and/or cloud resources in addition to our compute clusters. This project
will design and establish a new self-serve process that allows clients to discover and
requests our software and automates the installation and configuration of the requests
software.
Project Duties/Tasks





Learn about what commercial and open source science software we provide and
how clients get access to the software.
Familiarise with CSIRO's scientific computing facilities and learn about how some of
the software offload compute-intensive tasks to the compute clusters.
Learn about Microsoft's SCCM.
Automate the deployment of a selection of software.
Design and document a self-serve software deployment process.
Relevant Fields of Study

Information Technology

Software Engineering

Computer Science
Location: Clayton, Melbourne
Contact: Tim Ho by phone on (03) 9545 7846 or email tim.ho@csiro.au
IM&T04
Project Title
HPC hardware and software testing
Project Description
The level of concurrency in Exascale computing will lead to frequent hardware failures and
the need for robust processes to test and validate components as they are constantly
restarted, reimaged, or replaced. This project would produce and document tests which
would be used to validate high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure performance
overall and for individual components. The project would also look at tests to validate new
software images for compute nodes.
Project Duties/Tasks




Research and propose tests to validate HPC system performance
Research and propose tests to validate individual nodes and Infiniband fabric
Research and propose tests to validate new software images for HPC compute
nodes
Once there is agreement develop and document the above tests
Relevant Fields of Study

Information Technology

Software Engineering

Computer Science
Location: Yarralumla, Canberra or Clayton, Melbourne
Contact: Steve McMahon via phone on (02) 6214 2968 or email steve.mcmahon@csiro.au