This proposal requests funding to hold a workshop with the goals of understanding measurements for evaluating the quality and competitiveness of EPSCoR CI, comparing the quality of EPSCoR CI available to that available in 2007, and evaluating best practices for furthering CI development broadly construed. Before the workshop begins, a survey will be conducted to evaluate the current state of CI, broadly defined, across all 29 EPSCoR jurisdictions. The results of the survey will be discussed at the workshop as part of a 1½ day agenda consisting of overview presentations, panels, and breakout sessions with a focus on CI metrics, networking, HPC, CI software, workforce development, and meeting scientific challenges. This work has the potential to advance CI and support a broad set of science domains.
Intellectual Merit Cyberinfrastructure is playing an increasingly important role in the conduct of science and engineering research and significantly changing science and engineering methods. This activity will enable the Foundation to gather accurate and comprehensive data regarding current bandwidth and CI capabilities of EPSCoR eligible jurisdictions, and to understand how this has changed over the past 3-4 years. This workshop will outline actions that can be taken to ensure that cyberinfrastructure for research purposes is broadly available, and will assist EPSCoR jurisdictions to address any road blocks that have come up as part of the growth in importance to CI at a national level. This project also has the potential to increase awareness of the interaction of CI and scientific research and education.
Broader Impacts Many organizations have a stake or interest in cyberinfrastructure in support of research at US colleges and universities, especially since bandwidth and CI have been identified as two of the primary limiting factors affecting access to information and computing capacity at EPSCoR academic institutions. Any effort that can assist in supporting the deployment of CI and developing implementation plans to expand CI access has the potential to greatly improve the research and economic competitiveness of those jurisdictions.
A workshop on "Cyberinfrastructure in the EPSCoRs": was held in Arlington, Va. on Oct .7-8. 2010. The goal of the workshop was to assess the state of Cyberinfrastructure (CI) in all of the EPSCoR jurisdictions, and to make recommendations as to what their needs and goals are. There were two phases; input and output. For input, several invited speakers from key entities, NSF, NIH, OSTP, Internet2, and the US Congress gave overviews, and each of the EPSCoRs submitted an inventory of CI assets in each of their jurisdictions. Progress on the new cyberinfrastructure grants (funded by the ARRA stimulus, and now known as Track 2) was also reviewed. For output, there were separate discussion sections on outreach, metrics, and the four layers of CI: Networking, hardware, software and people issues. Each of these sessions presented a list of findings and recommendations. To summarize the highlights: The outreach section recommended a continuation and expansion of the CI Days and Campus Champion Programs. The metrics section recommended further study on the economic impact of cyberinfrastructure, especially on the generation of jobs through research grants. The network section stressed the importance of cooperative initiatives and of taking advantage of the multitude of other federal (non-NSF) programs to expand broadband networks to all areas of the country. The hardware section recommended more HPC infrastructure at the local level. The software section recommended the establishment of more programs to make applications code more robust and sustainable. The people section recommended specific actions to improve workforce development and diversity. It also emphasized the critical need for technical expertise between the applications and the compute engines. The workshop was attended by 107 registered participants, including at least one from each of the 29 EPSCoRs A workshop on "Cyberinfrastructure in the EPSCoRs": was held in Arlington, Va. on Oct .7-8. 2010. The goal of the workshop was to assess the state of Cyberinfrastructure (CI) in all of the EPSCoR jurisdictions, and to make recommendations as to what their needs and goals are. There were two phases; input and output. For input, several invited speakers from key entities, NSF, NIH, OSTP, Internet2, and the US Congress gave overviews, and each of the EPSCoRs submitted an inventory of CI assets in each of their jurisdictions. Progress on the new cyberinfrastructure grants (funded by the ARRA stimulus, and now known as Track 2) was also reviewed. For output, there were separate discussion sections on outreach, metrics, and the four layers of CI: Networking, hardware, software and people issues. Each of these sessions presented a list of findings and recommendations. To summarize the highlights: The outreach section recommended a continuation and expansion of the CI Days and Campus Champion Programs. The metrics section recommended further study on the economic impact of cyberinfrastructure, especially on the generation of jobs through research grants. The network section stressed the importance of cooperative initiatives and of taking advantage of the multitude of other federal (non-NSF) programs to expand broadband networks to all areas of the country. The hardware section recommended more HPC infrastructure at the local level. The software section recommended the establishment of more programs to make applications code more robust and sustainable. The people section recommended specific actions to improve workforce development and diversity. It also emphasized the critical need for technical expertise between the applications and the compute engines. The workshop was attended by 107 registered participants, including at least one from each of the 29 EPSCoRs
