Frank Kachurak
The past 21 years have seen Frank Kachurak from Penn State undergraduate to Azure Cloud Administrator with the University’s Office of Planning, Assessment, and Institutional Research. This month he will present at Tech Pros 2022 on behalf of OPAIR.
Kachurak earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science in Dec. 2000 and began his career with the University the following spring providing computer and network IT support in the Department of Geosciences.
It was there that he also helped to manage the Astrobiology Research Center, hosted by a consortium within Penn State and other various universities across the country with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
One of the first projects the group worked on was an early videoconferencing system – before the days of Zoom technology – and wrote and published a course for the Astrobiology Research Center, and ran it across the country.
“That project was a lot of fun,” he shared. “It was an incredible learning experience, and I get to say that my name appears somewhere in the record books at NASA. How great is that?”
After Geosciences, Kachurak continued to work in computer and network support with the department of biology, and then as a network and security administrator and security analyst after the department consolidated with Eberly College of Science.
During this time, he also earned a Master of Information Technology from Virginia Tech.
From there, Kachurak worked with Internal Audit, then the Office of Development and Alumni Relations and Penn State Cloud Services as part of a talent share program.
Then, last summer, a little more than 20 years into his Penn State career, Kachurak saw a posting for Azure Cloud Administrator in OPAIR and knew the job would be a good fit for the professional direction he was looking to go.
AZURE AND OPAIR
Azure, a Microsoft product, offers software, platform and infrastructure services, including more than 100 cloud products. The functionality of the forthcoming University-wide Institutional Data Repository (IDR) will utilize the Azure Advanced Data Analytics Platform, Microsoft’s cloud-based data warehousing and analytics platform.
In his role as Azure Cloud Administrator with OPAIR, Kachurak works with data management and operations to ensure that data consumers across the University can easily access reliable data when they need it.
As he described it, “We can now do everything that we would physically do with computers and servers on-premises, but in the cloud. It’s a dynamic shift where we’re taking the systems, network, and security administration and moving it to a remote data center that allows us to add additional systems, computing power and storage in nearly real-time when we need it and remove it when we don’t. By doing this, we have full access to the resources we need, and we save funds when we don’t need those resources.”
Kachurak added that with a portion of data stored on-site, another aspect of his job is orchestrating data getting from the on-premises systems into the cloud and vice versa, working with his OPAIR colleagues to ensure they have the tools and technical capabilities that they need. This often involves the use of machine learning.
Azure Machine Learning is a collaborative tool designed to help data scientists and machine learning engineers leverage their existing data processing and model development skills and frameworks, as well as help them to scale, distribute, and deploy their workloads to the cloud. The service allows them to put reproducible machine-learning models into production in a safe and auditable environment while discovering solutions to help speed up and automate day-to-day activities.
“OPAIR’s data scientists are using this and learning all about its features and capabilities,” said Kachurak. “I work to make sure they have what they need to continue on this path by taking a deep dive into the technology, figuring out how it works, and learning the ins and outs of the tool so they have a solid starting point from which to work. We then team up to fine-tune the details, and test and troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Most importantly, we do this all while being fiscally responsible,” he added. “Serving as responsible stewards of our resources is always important.”
Outside of his core administrator duties, Kachurak also serves as a release manager. When a new piece of code is ready to be pushed out either to an on-premises or cloud system, he facilitates code reviews, troubleshooting and coordinating with IT Application Infrastructure before anything is officially released.
“We want to make sure we’re all on the same page and we prevent any potential downtime of our systems,” he said. “We want to provide the most seamless experience possible for our system users; for Penn State.”
PENN STATE PRIDE
Kachurak is clear about the profound influence Penn State has had on his education and career.
“I wouldn’t be sitting right here if it wasn’t for Penn State,” he said.
He credits the University with providing him with a solid computer science degree that not only taught him how to program but challenged him to continue to learn and always take things a step further to create a better algorithm, a better design, or a better piece of software.
“That [work ethic] being instilled in me is what set me on this trajectory. By continually growing, and working through various positions at Penn State, I got to see the University from a variety of vantage points,” he said. “As I progressed in understanding the data needs of research and geological scientists, and the data needs of the audit department I began to see the big picture of data here. If I had to sum it up, I feel I’m in my current position with OPAIR because of Penn State, if that makes sense. We truly are one University.”
TECH PROS
Kachurak will provide an inside look into one of OPAIR’s major initiatives for Penn State IT professionals attending Tech Pros 2022 when he presents “What is the IDR and Why Should I Care?” Friday, June 10, from 11:00 to 11:50 a.m., in 105 Michael Baker Building at Penn State Beaver.
According to the event agenda the session will, “… provide a brief overview of the IDR, then will take a technical deep dive into the design of the system, the utilization of Azure components for its implementation, and will explore how our fellow IT professionals can help support their customers as we introduce the IDR as our flagship data analysis and data consumption system.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting with IT professionals across the University to introduce our use of Azure within the IDR,” Kachurak said. “How did we get here? What technologies did we use to build it? How it works for us and how it can work for them.
“If there’s something that we can collaborate on, let’s do it. It’s going to make both departments grow more quickly than if we’re on our own islands trying to figure things out ourselves. That’s the big takeaway I hope those who join the presentation get. After all, we are one Penn State.”
