NSF Leadership Focus of Report on Cyberinfrastructure in Academia

May 04, 2011

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The results of a 2010 workshop on how universities and research sites can interface with the national cyberinfrastructure are now available in a report. The workshop, hosted by Indiana University, looked at software and services, user support, and information technology, all with two goals in mind: Identifying common elements of widely used software stacks across the world and policy documents that research universities should have in place.

Discussed at length in the report is the concept of "campus bridging," a concept wherein a scientist or engineer’s personal cyberinfrastructure in seamlessly integrated into the cyberinfrastructure on the scientist’s campus; cyberinfrastructure at other campuses; and cyberinfrastructure at the regional, national, and international levels.

Indiana University is leading a task force on campus bridging that is funded by the National Science Foundation.

In early 2009 the NSF Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure charged six different task forces to make strategic recommendations to the NSF on campus bridging, data, grand Challenges and Virtual Organizations, high performance computing; software and tools, and work force development.

Some of the recommendations for fostering campus grid interconnectedness in this report ask the NSF to step up to the plate and lead the establishment of a coordinated, national cyberinfrastructure support system for users, a blueprint for a "National Cyberinfrastructure," and the emphasis of reliability and usability in its grant review process.

You can read the full report here.

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