$1.1M NSF grant to fund statewide cyberinfrastructure project

Researchers at the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), together with collaborators at other institutions within Pennsylvania, have been awarded approximately $1.1 million in funding under the U.S. National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure program to develop a commonwealth-wide secure network and related cyberinfrastructure to interconnect Pennsylvania colleges and universities.

The project aims to address challenges identified in a planning grant that proposal partner KINBER, a nonprofit organization committed to working with communities, governments, businesses and schools to advance digital equity and inclusion, was awarded in 2022, Evans said. Other project collaborators include faculty from Swarthmore College, Lafayette College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the Penn State University Digital Foundry at New Kensington (DFNK). Together, they will work to implement the planned PA Science DMZ to improve the cross-institutional research projects that have been identified as being hampered by the lack of secure connectivity between institutions.