Data Movement Beyond Networks

Jennifer Schopf joins TACC as Director of Network Partnerships with the goal to expand support for researchers

As the center’s new director of the Networking Partnerships team, Jennifer Schopf is a connector — someone who can look at different opportunities and fit the right people and pieces together.

Her expertise also cross-cuts divisions and projects. In the year that she’s been at TACC, she has worked on proposals to support the use of open source software, operations and data movement issues, and monitoring work with the NSF ACCESS cyberinfrastructure program.

“Jennifer and her group add tremendous new capabilities to the center,” said TACC Executive Director Dan Stanzione. “Her extensive expertise in collaborating with users end-to-end from remote sites to make full use of sites like TACC will continue to expand our reach. We’re very excited to have her here.”

This year, she was appointed as the UT Austin representative to the Lonestar Education and Research Network board to advocate for UT Austin’s networking interests.

Prior to TACC, Schopf spent nine years at Indiana University where she directed the Engagement and Performance Operations Center (EPOC), a collaboration funded by a $3.5 million NSF grant that is jointly run with the Energy Sciences Network, part of the U.S. Department of Energy.

EPOC moved to TACC along with Schopf and several of the EPOC staff, where they continue to focus on end-to-end performance across networks for various cyberinfrastructure-type workflows.

“TACC is growing and expanding in supporting even more science because the leadership understands that it’s not just what happens within the center,” she said. “You need to get the data to the center to conduct analysis, and then share those results with the community.”