Espri

IPSL Computing and Data Center for Climate Sciences

The ESPRI staff is composed of permanent and fixed-term contracts from:

  • CNRS, which is the recognized French national multidisciplinary research organization,
  • Sorbonne University and University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, ones of the most prestigious French scientific universities,
  • IRD which is the French national research institute for sustainable development.

A wide range of professional profiles contribute to the development of ESPRI with:

  • Project managers who coordinate all the ESPRI activities and projects;
  • Data managers in charge of the data life-cycle;
  • Data scientists to accompany and support users in their data analysis. They also provide Artificial Intelligence advice and climate services missions;
  • Software engineers who produce and maintain the software environments and applications;
  • Web developers who cover the development of web applications for data access;
  • Infrastructure engineers in charge of the general maintenance of the computing and storage infrastructure.

ESPRI hierarchical organization chart

Teams

ESPRI engineers ensure the harmonization of the development of this mutualized and multi-site data analysis platform and work in close relationship with scientific teams, allowing them to understand and efficiently take into account their requirements. They identify and implement new technologies on prototypes and select the best operational solutions to be deployed.

The ESPRI staff is organised into three teams:

  • ESPRI-Infra, in charge of the infrastructure itself (workstations, servers, disks, network, and software) and user support,
  • ESPRI-Obs, which offers services for management and valorization of observation data,
  • ESPRI-Mod, which offers similar services for management and valorization of numerical simulations.

ESPRI functional organization chart

Governance

Through the various projects in which we are involved, ESPRI shares its expertise and increases its competence in software engineering and data science. The experiences of each member are regularly shared within ESPRI in order to improve the infrastructure in place and the technologies on which it is based. Regular meetings are held within the team to discuss various aspects and share expertise and best practices. Various technical working groups are also set up to develop common services and tools.

The governance of ESPRI is then organised at different levels:

  • An executive board, composed of the leaders of ESPRI teams, meets monthly to coordinate the roadmap, resources and follow up on transversal actions.
  • A technical committee, composed of all ESPRI engineers, quarterly meets to share expertise, best practices, methodologies, tools and to create synergies.
  • A steering committee, in which the centres, the IPSL management and the institutional partners are represented, meets once a year. This committee is also composed of key users.

Beyond the ESPRI group, some members of the team are taking responsibilities in national, European or international governance bodies or working groups (DATA-TERRA, CLIMERI-France, ESGF, CM-SAF, EOSC, Copernicus), allowing them to have a synthetic, thematic and global view on the tools, norms, standards used in the community. In particular, engineers and project managers of the group regularly follow the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and RDA-France working groups, attending the annual meetings, allowing them to have an overview of the latest discussions on the best practices of data management and on all aspects of the data life cycle. Various members of the group also participate in national professional networks (SIST, JRES, etc.) to share expertise and best practices in our communities.

Funding

This organizational composition implies a significant support of the ESPRI funding bodies which bring constant support and put human resources in ESPRI services. In addition, to develop its services and to extend and maintain its equipment, the ESPRI services rely on financial resources from European and National projects led by the IPSL federative structures, by ESPRI or by the research teams of the IPSL laboratories.

The overall annual budget is mostly affected by the funding of permanent staff on government positions, including IT specialists. Contractors are hired when required, in particular for R&D and for the development of new functionalities and new projects. An important part of the total budget of ESPRI also comes from the contribution of the hosting establishments which take charge of the infrastructure costs related to the hosting for the electricity consumption and the maintenance of the air-conditioning equipment.

Organization & Teams