Sarah Poon
Sarah Poon is user interface designer, web application developer, and HCI researcher, currently working in the Computational Research Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. As a practitioner, her focus is based on designing and developing web applications that take advantage of new technologies and practices of web interaction. Her research focus is primarily in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW). In particular, she's interested in understanding the challenges and the motivations for collaboration in distributed scientific teams and how technology can mediate collaboration.
Journal Articles
Cecilia Aragon, Stephen Bailey, Sarah Poon, Karl Runge, and Rollin Thomas, "Sunfall: A Collaborative Visual Analytics System for Astrophysics", J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 125 012091 (Proceedings of SciDAC 2008), 2008, LBNL 657E,
- Download File: jpconf8125012091.pdf (pdf: 3.3 MB)
Conference Papers
NC Chen, SS Poon, L Ramakrishnan, CR Aragon, "Considering time in designing Large-Scale systems for scientific computing", Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW, 2016, 27:1535--1547, doi: 10.1145/2818048.2819988
Lavanya Ramakrishnan, Sarah S. Poon, Val C. Hendrix, Dan K. Gunter, Gilberto Z. Pastorello, Deb A. Agarwal, "Experiences with User-Centered Design for the Tigres Workflow API", Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Conference on e-Science (e-Science 2014), Guaruja, Brazil, 2014, doi: 10.1109/eScience.2014.56
JR Balderrama, M Simonin, L Ramakrishnan, V Hendrix, C Morin, D Agarwal, C Tedeschi, "Combining workflow templates with a shared space-based execution model", Proceedings of WORKS 2014: The 9th Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science - held in conjunction with SC 2014: The International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, 2014, 50--58, doi: 10.1109/WORKS.2014.14
Cecilia Aragon, Sarah Poon, Gregory Aldering, Rollin Thomas, and Robert Quimby, "Using Visual Analytics to Maintain Situational Awareness in Astrophysics", Proceedings of 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology, Columbus, OH, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press, October 2008, LBNL 658E,
- Download File: aragonvast08.pdf (pdf: 448 KB)
Sarah Poon, Rollin Thomas, Cecilia Aragon, and Brian Lee, "Context-Linked Virtual Assistants for Distributed Teams: An Astrophysics Case Study", CSCW 2008: ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 2008,
- Download File: cscw08contextlinked.pdf (pdf: 625 KB)
Reports
Drew Paine, Sarah Poon, Lavanya Ramakrishnan, "Investigating User Experiences with Data Abstractions on High Performance Computing Systems", June 29, 2021, LBNL LBNL-2001374,
Scientific exploration generates expanding volumes of data that commonly require High Performance Computing (HPC) systems to facilitate research. HPC systems are complex ecosystems of hardware and software that frequently are not user friendly. The Usable Data Abstractions (UDA) project set out to build usable software for scientific workflows in HPC environments by undertaking multiple rounds of qualitative user research. Qualitative research investigates how individuals accomplish their work and our interview-based study surfaced a variety of insights about the experiences of working in and with HPC ecosystems. This report examines multiple facets to the experiences of scientists and developers using and supporting HPC systems. We discuss how stakeholders grasp the design and configuration of these systems, the impacts of abstraction layers on their ability to successfully do work, and the varied perceptions of time that shape this work. Examining the adoption of the Cori HPC at NERSC we explore the anticipations and lived experiences of users interacting with this system's novel storage feature, the Burst Buffer. We present lessons learned from across these insights to illustrate just some of the challenges HPC facilities and their stakeholders need to account for when procuring and supporting these essential scientific resources to ensure their usability and utility to a variety of scientific practices.
