Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $21.6 million to 34 institutions across the country through the foundation’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) program. The projects will seek to improve U.S. University and college computer networks that are necessary for movement of the large data sets required for data-intensive scientific research. The awards to the 34 institutions across 23 states support two categories of awards:

Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards provide support of up to $1 million for up to two years.  These awards address the challenges of achieving end-user network performance across complex, distributed research and education environments.  They seek to integrate existing and new technologies with applied innovations by taking advantage of network research results, prototypes and emerging innovations–and using them to achieve higher levels of performance, reliability and predictability.

 

Data Driven Networking Infrastructure awards provide support of up to $500,000 for up to two years and address network infrastructure improvements at the campus level. These awards, for example, support upgrading and re-architecting campus networks to support movement of a wide range of large science data sets to include large files, sensor networks, distributed and real-time data.

 

Read the full press release from the NSF below:

The National Science Foundation recently awarded nearly $21.6 million to 34 campus-level networking projects to adapt and improve U.S. university and college computer networks that are necessary for movement of the large data sets required for data-intensive scientific research.

 

Made through NSF’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) program, the awards will enable academic research networks to run applications and share large, complex data, which are part of an expanding Big Data revolution.

 

Twenty-three states and 34 institutions across the country received awards.

 

“It’s good that so many academic institutions are taking advantage of this opportunity,” said Alan Blatecky, director of NSF’s Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), which funded the awards. “We are building a phenomenal portfolio that benefits NSF’s academic research communities.”

 

The CC-NIE program was developed from a series of community discussions and input to enable NSF academic research communities to upgrade their campus-level fiber optic infrastructure and make improved, dynamic networks a reality. It leverages emerging networking capacities and capabilities, including research and innovation from the NSF-funded Global Environment for Networking Innovation project, which is some 250 times faster than networks available today.

 

“One of the goals of CC-NIE is to take advantage of network research and development results and to explore how they can be integrated and applied at the campus level,” said Kevin Thompson, CC-NIE program manager for NSF. “We see enormous potential to drive innovation in data networking this way and, at the same time, deliver usable networking services and capabilities to the NSF research and education community.”

 

The 34 CC-NIE projects support two categories of awards:

 

• Network Integration and Applied Innovation projects that aim to achieve higher levels of performance, reliability and predictability for science applications and distributed research projects, and

• Data Driven Networking Infrastructure for the Campus and Researcher projects that invest in improvements and re-engineering at the campus level to make use of dynamic network services that support a range of scientific data transfers and movement.

Network Integration and Applied Innovation awards provide support of up to $1 million for up to two years.  These awards address the challenges of achieving end-user network performance across complex, distributed research and education environments.  They seek to integrate existing and new technologies with applied innovations by taking advantage of network research results, prototypes and emerging innovations–and using them to achieve higher levels of performance, reliability and predictability.

 

Data Driven Networking Infrastructure awards provide support of up to $500,000 for up to two years and address network infrastructure improvements at the campus level. These awards, for example, support upgrading and re-architecting campus networks to support movement of a wide range of large science data sets to include large files, sensor networks, distributed and real-time data.

 

A complete list of awardees and projects is available on the NSF website.

 

(Contributed by Kenneth Hines, CCC Program Associate)