Dear Chameleon users,

This month was all about focusing on our users’ work and understanding how exactly you are using Chameleon and for what type of research. 

Chameleon for research. Many of our users use Chameleon for research, as evidenced by a large collection of  research papers published as a result of your work. We like to show these off on our Chameleon Used  in Research web page, which now features over 600 publications! Many of these publications are submitted by users during the allocation renewal process – though of course you don’t have to wait for  renewal – you can report them anytime! Others we find by looking for papers that reference Chameleon and verifying that they indeed used the testbed in arriving at a research result. This web page is very important and not just because we are proud of the tremendous achievements of our user community – it also allows NSF, our funder, to assess how useful its investment in research infrastructure has been. This is why we require that you cite or acknowledge Chameleon as part of the terms and conditions for the use of the system – otherwise the evidence that you used the system is lost (NB: citing is better than acknowledging because there are many services that index citations so that those papers are easier to find). In other words: if you want NSF to continue funding Chameleon, cite or acknowledge it in your papers and make sure we know about them!

Chameleon for education. We were delighted to see so many of you at the Chameleon User Meeting last month! It was particularly interesting to see the great breadth and variety of educational projects supported on Chameleon and shared under the educational theme of the meeting: tutorials, competitions, large-scale classes, seminar level classes, summer schools, and others. We have gathered these presentations and electronic artifacts where possible (see the "program" tab) – with the hope that they can help you understand how to use the testbed for teaching. Many of these could potentially be adapted to help you develop your own classes or your own methodology for teaching with testbeds. We’d also like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to the FOUNT project that partners with Chameleon to develop teaching materials in data systems. Watch that space for new electronic materials that will allow you to teach your classes better. 

With that, we’d like to wish you a wonderful summer whether it means rest or exciting work – and, as always, please do let us know how we can highlight your results better or better serve your research and education needs.