Implementing Research Cyberinfrastructure for the 21st Century

Abstract

As a result of innovative partnerships between the Office of Information Technology, collegiate units, and other Central units, outstanding technological support systems for administrative and academic needs have been developed to serve faculty, staff and students. Central and local IT support staffs maintain servers and desktop computers to ensure availability and security of information technology tools and resources. The University’s Digital Media Center, along with academic technology support staffs in local units, provides a variety of services to instructors and students using technology in teaching and learning. .

Dramatic advances in information technology make way for exciting new opportunities for research as well. New technologies allow projects to span disciplines and institutions, enabling researchers to seek new answers to critical questions in ways that were impossible just years or even months ago. Indeed, research computing is a top priority for leading universities and research institutions around the globe; furthermore, cyberinfrastructure is seen as a key factor in securing research funding and attracting and retaining top faculty and students.

The expanded research agendas in many disciplines are now outpacing the computing resources available to individual researchers, departments, or even institutions. Enabling this research requires large-scale investments in high-performance computing, storage and networking, as well as the development of cyberinfrastructure to integrate these components into a meaningful whole.

Cyberinfrastructure includes the instruments, sensors, high performance computational systems, massive storage systems, data resources, and visualization facilities, tied together by high speed networks and made to work together by advanced software to accomplish goals that would not be possible by any single information technology system. It also includes the people, processes, training, security, policies, and capabilities to sustain the systems and networks over time. Implementing cyberinfrastructure requires a high level of coordination and collaboration between researchers and an information technology workforce with expertise in scientific computing.