$5.3 Million NSF Grant for Cyberinfrastructure Research

New network will extend the benefits of cluster computing to more scientists.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant of $5.3 Million to establish a network of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure and Education Facilitators (ACI-REFs). A project team at Clemson University will collaborate with a collection of partner instutions that includes University of Hawaii, University of Southern California, University of Utah, University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University.  
The goal of the grant is to provide support for extending the power of advanced cyberinfrastructure, high-performance techniques to a broader range of scholars, including scientists who "...traditionally have not benefitted from the power of massively scaled cluster computing, but who recognize that their research requires access to more compute power than can be provided by their desktop machines."
According to Clemson Chief Information Officer Jim Bottum, who is serving as principal investigator for the project, "With universities facing a growing data tsunami in virtually all disciplines, we've realized that now is the time to build a more cloud-like research infrastructure support model across campuses to help faculty and students meet their data challenges."