Improving regional cyberinfrastructure services through collaboration: Cyberteam for the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium

Advances in the volume, diversity, and complexity of research data and associated workflows requires enhanced capabilities to access, secure, reuse, process, analyze, understand, curate, share, and preserve data. To address this need at the regional level the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the University of Utah formed a "Cyberteam" in 2017 to provide cyberinfrastructure (CI) support to researchers at institutions in the Rocky Mountain Advanced Computing Consortium (RMACC) encompassing states across the Intermountain West. The Cyberteam is comprised of CI professionals across the three institutions who collaborate closely, sharing expertise and resources. Since its establishment, the Cyberteam has worked to broaden accessibility and options for computing, storage, and data publishing for RMACC researchers; enhance training on data- and workflow-oriented topics; improve engagement with researchers using CI; and better understand user needs and challenges. One key accomplishment has been the development of a series of focus group and survey instruments to achieve better understanding the CI needs and challenges of researchers across a diverse spectrum of disciplines. This paper provides an overview of the RMACC Cyberteam's objectives, accomplishments, challenges, and future direction.