Clemson leads $6M technology initiative

Clemson University is leading a cyber-infrastructure project that has earned a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The federal funding will provide South Carolina institutions with supercomputing capability for collaboration and bridging information and national data resources.

South Carolina and Tennessee will partner to support shared information in research between various universities and national data. The initiative will advance study and understanding of advanced materials and systems biology, two domains where computational science is the driving force.

This project will offer research faculty at regional institutions access to national computational data and supercomputing resources, such as application development and deployment, technical support and training.

This grant supplements significant cyber-infrastructure investments by federal, state and private sources in both states made in recent years. Investments include Clemson’s regional optical network C-Light, South Carolina Light Rail, the Rural Health Care Network and Clemson’s high-performance and grid computing initiatives in South Carolina and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

The funds will be used to hire research scientists who will facilitate network improvements and the expansion, development and use of software specific to the systems biology and materials disciplines.

Clemson’s chief information officer, James Bottum, is principal investigator for the grant in South Carolina.

“Integrated cyber-infrastructure is essential to research competitiveness and access to high-end resources is often difficult and expensive. Partnership is critical to advancement,” Bottum said. “We believe this partnership between institutions, and the resulting benefits of our collaboration, to be an important step in advancing the competitive position of our state.

Partner institutions include Clemson, Claflin University, the College of Charleston, The Citadel, the Medical University of South Carolina, S.C. State University, the University of South Carolina, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Vanderbilt University and the University of Michigan.

The South Carolina Research Authority is the fiscal agent for the project.

“The beauty of technology is its adaptability to all areas of study, supporting any field of expertise across all boundaries,” Bottum said. “This grant and this project can serve as a model for additional partnerships in other fields.”