Research cyberinfrastructure ecosystems are catalysts for discovery and innovation that play a critical role in ensuring U.S. leadership in science and engineering. An investment in national research cyberinfrastructure serves the evolving needs of the research community, increases economic competitiveness and opportunity, and strengthens national security.

The U.S. National Science Foundation announced an additional investment of $52 million through the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support, or ACCESS, program. ACCESS will improve the accessibility of national cyberinfrastructure centers and increase integration with systems and research communities on campuses across the nation. The 2022 ACCESS awardee teams comprise 71 researchers, students, staff and more than 90 partner organizations across the country. The five 2022 ACCESS awardees will work to improve the agility, accessibility, usability and coordination of the research cyberinfrastructure ecosystem.

The NSF funded five awards for five independently managed yet tightly-coordinated services defined in the following five tracks: (1) Allocation Services; (2) End User Support Services; (3) Operations & Integration Services; (4) Monitoring & Measurement Services; and (5) Technology Translation Services. Together, these services are expected to provide a seamless experience for an increasing breadth of research users across a highly performing innovative array of national computational computing resources.

FIU and AmLight are participating in Track 3: Operational & Integration Services with sub-award “The COre National Ecosystem for CyberinfrasTructure (CONECT) Award” to provide operations, data and networking, and cybersecurity support.

CONECT will be led by NCSA in partnership with the Florida International University, Indiana University, PSC, the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and the University of Chicago.

ACCESS’s CONECT project is a $20 million, five-year award, that delivers innovative integrations across the NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure ecosystem in operations, data, networking, and cybersecurity. Research and education in science and engineering are increasingly reliant on a seamlessly integrated, secure and robust ecosystem of advanced computing, data technologies, and human expertise. CONECT will employ agile mechanisms to integrate rapidly diversifying non-traditional resources by building on the successes of its predecessors to create a more dynamic, inclusive, reliable and secure ecosystem.