Rachana Ananthakrishnan

Kaia Brem interviewed Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Executive Director, Globus at the University of Chicago, in June 2021.

Can you share a little bit about what it is that you do and what a typical day for you is like?

I am the Executive Director and Head of Products of the Globus department at the University of Chicago. We are a self-sustained unit that delivers hosted services for researchers, specifically in the data management space. We use federated identities and provide solutions for researchers to be able to handle, move, share, and index large data.

In my role, I lead the department, and have responsibilities spanning all aspects of the department - product, finance and business. Much of my job is direction setting; understanding where the roadblocks are and helping move things forward. I directly manage our product team and software engineering team, and spend a lot of time in that area. Typically my day has a lot of internal-facing for prioritization and resourcing; and external-facing meetings - talking to our users, our customer base, and participating in some of the community events.

Since Globus is fairly new, how long have you been working for them? How have you seen it progress?

Globus as a software development group has been around for decades, providing solutions in the distributed computing area. [Originally] we were providing software for them to install, and operate. I joined them 20 years ago right out of college, and worked as a software developer, and then I spent multiple years in customer engagement to integrate Globus across domains.

In 2010, Globus  moved to provide hosted solutions, and this dramatically reduced the barrier of entry [for new users]. We were also one of the first to introduce a subscription based sustainability model in the research space. That was not commonly done as people relied mainly on research grants.  Then, I moved into a product management role for the SaaS service, and from there on my role has gotten broader and grown. It’s very exciting to see something like that in a 10 year time frame. 

You said that you started just out of college, and many people don’t plan to work in Identity and Access Management, but end up doing so through a circuitous career path. Did you intend to work in IAM? How did you end up here and what has kept you here?

I wouldn’t quite say this is what I targeted. I went to Indiana University for my Masters, and after my first semester I ended up taking a research assistantship at a lab there developing software for researchers. It let me dabble and explore more software for science. When I graduated, I had the opportunity to keep working in the research space which I took. So I wouldn’t say I targeted it, but once I got in, very quickly I realized I wanted to stay. 

What is the most rewarding aspect of your position?

It’s certainly [the] impact - outcomes you see from the science domain using our services are the reason that motivates many of us. We work with a wide variety of researchers, and you hear some of these wonderful stories. We’ve had cosmologists working on dark imagery surveys; a researcher who works on understanding rare diseases; [and even] researchers studying creativity through FMRIs of someone playing jazz music. These are our users - people who leverage the tools that [we] work on, and they do amazing things that have impact on society.

One of the climate projects I was involved in provided infrastructure for climate change research, and that work ended up getting a Nobel prize. Globus [also] got used for COVID research last year for managing data from imaging of the virus. All of those things are just super inspiring - [we’re] enabling science, and to me that’s the best part. 

How have you seen the pandemic impact your field and yourself?

There’s the short term, tactical impact of the disruptions for people who [were] working in offices. As a team, we have prided ourselves on building a team with a great level of flexibility on work hours and location  — I myself over the last 20 years have moved to four places because of my husband’s job. So shifting to working from home, all of us knew how to do that; we were set up for that [and] our systems were set up for that. Then there is the intangible impact on everybody of dealing with uncertainty, sick relatives or kids at home, small spaces etc. That was the biggest impact I saw, especially leading a team: you see people struggling to balance it all while delivering at work and make sense of the situation. But this has made work flexibility more mainstream in the industry now, which is a definite benefit. 

The pandemic also has brought new opportunities for collaborative research and ways our product and services are useful for such use cases. 

I heard at one point you had kids in the background, was that one of the new stressors? Having to now be on top of a full time job, and also becoming a part time teacher, etc?

Yes, absolutely. Before, there was a wall between our personal lives and our work life. You cleanly separate it, and I would actually argue that maybe there’s artificial pressure when you work from home, because you want to show you are fully engaged. Overall, there’s this very carefully constructed work persona and that has had lots of holes poked in it this year. 

I do feel these boundaries have blurred a bit, which honestly I think it’s healthy for us to do. Trying to armor ourselves for a work place and never let anybody know your other stressors is probably not good in the long run; it’s a lot of pressure on yourself

Have you seen Identify and Access Management change at all during your time working in it? If so, how?

Identity and Access Management is typically enterprise [centered], but my affiliation has always been at the intersection of IAM and research. So the space I’m most interested in is how IAM works for scientists - for their day-to-day work for research and science.

I think a big influencer has definitely been the [usability of commercial products]. It has definitely influenced how we think about building solutions and [started a push towards] putting user interaction and usability first, and web first.  I’ve seen the evolution from “yeah it’s secure, it’s going to take you a while to learn, but that’s fine, that’s security” to “no, it’s not secure if people can’t understand how to use it well and use shortcuts, so let’s think about how to make it accessible.” 

Privacy and data security concerns have become more mainstream. Just in the last five years, I have seen a dramatic shift in our conversations about privacy. Whether it’s the GDPR, or the state laws here, more people are aware of these things.

On that topic, where do you predict things are going to go? Do you have any things you feel, in the academic space, we’re moving towards? Maybe things enterprise is or isn’t doing, we have different needs, we have cross-compatibility to think about, especially with covid. What’s your perspective on where these elements will take IAM in the future?

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The big thing that the research space needs that the rest of the campus community does not need is this multilateral trust. It’s not even that I am going to collaborate with one more institution, it’s that you have ten people collaborating with Institution A, another ten people collaborating with Institution B, and how do you scale that? And that’s why a lot of the federation work that’s been done has been valuable, a lot of progress has been made. I think there is more of that being turned around and presented to enterprise ID Management. 

So I definitely see pushing further in that direction and I think the pandemic has given us that impetus to move. Ian Foster, who’s one of the founders of Globus, noted at our conference keynote this year that despite the worst of times, the pandemic has spurred faster and better collaboration amongst scientists to tackle the issues. Across institutions and federal agencies, people found ways to work together.  

I hope that the lessons we learned will get pushed through not just in IAM space, but broadly for research infrastructure. The problems we are trying to solve, climate change, AI ethics,  are not going to get solved by one corner of the world, it has to be collaborative.

Where would you like to go with your career? Where do you see yourself in 5 years, 10 years?

I want to stay in the non-profit research and education market, and pretty invested in this space. I believe that we have a great platform at this department of the university. The goal is to expand the scope of the kind of services we offer researchers and grow the product that way. 

I enjoy being a bridge between the customer and technology. There’s always someone who’s [an expert in their research but not necessarily in the tech] and I like that I can make those connections and help build those bridges. 

Higher-ed and IT both tend to be fairly male dominated fields. Is there anything in particular about being a woman at the intersection of these fields that you’d like to comment on?

I think the space can be very intimidating from the outside. We use terminology and write job descriptions that can be hard  for people to relate to and understand. We forget that there are so many other skills that come with being successful [in this field] - it’s not just about being technical, there is so much more to putting together and delivering a product that’s successful.

I have probably seen the similar challenges and situations many women in this space see with biases : assumptions that I cannot answer technical questions is one that comes to mind. But in general, I’ve had a very positive team and the work environment I’ve been in from the beginning has been utterly supportive. 

A lot more can be done to encourage diversity -  mentorships, getting a group of people who can talk to each other and relate to each other, etc. I think [it’s important to] connect with [young girls] early — middle school and high school ages — before ideas have formed and set in their heads that they cannot do this or won’t relate to this. Grace Hopper is [an organization] that does this well. There's another group called Women in HPC that is very active in the university space. I am very optimistic that shifts can happen, and shifts will happen.

What are some things you do to relieve stress, given your high stress position?

Definitely, kids and the fact that there is a family life to go back to whether I’m having a good day at work or not, just being there for and with them. It sometimes feels a lot to balance, but in some sense it just forces you to disconnect a little bit which I think helps. I enjoy reading and continue to learn an instrument I learnt as a kid - picking up a new skill, it forces me to focus in a different way and see myself in a different light. I love going on hikes and being outdoors.  An instrument, quiet time with a book, and getting out on hikes; not quite rituals but pretty close. I try to find time for these things, but I think the family grounds me a lot.