HARRISBURG, Penn., March 5 — The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER), a non-profit membership organization devoted to fostering collaboration through technology, received a $150,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to develop workshops and other activities that will improve the ability of colleges and universities throughout Pennsylvania to better understand and utilize their network infrastructure to support scientific applications and research on their campuses. These leadership activities will focus on the understanding, deployment, integration and support of campus cyberinfrastructure technologies, such as perfSONAR, campus science DMZ, end-to-end performance monitoring and campus cybersecurity within the campus environment.
“KINBER will leverage existing collaborations within its membership to develop expertise in cyberinfrastructure technologies throughout community anchor institutions,” said Wendy Huntoon, KINBER executive director.
“As we raise the level of understanding of these technologies, including performance monitoring and measurement, the higher education community will better fit the network resources to the science activities on campus, maximizing resources to enable research and innovation,” Huntoon said.
KINBER’s proposal included letters of support from Bucknell University, Carnegie Mellon University, Internet2, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, MAGPI at the University of Pennsylvania, Susquehanna University, Temple University, and University of Pittsburgh.
“Pitt will benefit from KINBER’s CC*IIE program particularly by gaining valuable experience in deploying the perfSONAR mesh, said Jinx P. Walton, chief information officer of the University of Pittsburgh and KINBER board chair. “The proposed project will help the university continue to advance its research mission by further increasing opportunities for scientific collaboration with researchers at other institutions,” she said.
“Our campus faculty collaborations, which are currently focused on the ATLAS detector at the CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) particle collider, will benefit greatly. As a small cyberinfrastructure resource-limited rural university, our participation with the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) through the Open Science Grid infrastructure is throttled by commodity internet bandwidth,” noted Mark D. Huber, chief information officer and director of IT for Susquehanna University.
KINBER received a Regional Coordination and Partnership in Advanced Networking award of $150,000 for up to 2 years from the NSF’s Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure “Campus Cyberinfrastructure – Infrastructure, Innovation and Engineering (CC*IIE)” program, which invests in improvements and re-engineering at the campus level to support a range of data transfers supporting computational science and computer networks and systems research.
The Regional Coordination and Partnership in Advanced Networking program seeks to build regional centers for community building, coordination and partnership through leadership activities at institutions whose expertise and resources in advanced network engineering can be leveraged and applied to partnering with other local and regional institutions.
“Our campus, faculty, staff, students and researchers will benefit by being able to collaborate with other KINBER universities and affiliates,” Timothy O’Rourke, vice president for computer services and chief information officer of Temple University, said. “With Temple University as part of this high-performance networking we will be able to expand our academic pursuits and increase research projects.”
KINBER’s project will be implemented through four basic activities: workshops, campus visits, broader dissemination and a PA-based perfSONAR mesh. perfSONAR is a network measurement and monitoring toolkit that helps to identify and isolate problems as they happen.
Two types of workshops will be offered: Campus Cyberinfrastructure workshops, focusing on a fundamental set campus cyberinfrastructure technologies; and, perfSONAR Workshops, focused specifically on the deployment of perfSONAR platforms within the campus environment.
The initial perfSONAR Workshop will include a pilot program, providing pre-configured perfSONAR platforms to six campuses in order understand if pre-configured platforms lead to faster integration of into the campus infrastructure.
Site visits to PA campuses by KINBER engineers will serve to further the understanding and adoption of network based cyberinfrastructure technologies and services.
Broader dissemination will include posting workshop materials on the KINBER website as well as giving presentations and tutorials at the appropriate venues.
A PA-based perfSONAR mesh will be developed. Campuses throughout the commonwealth will be encouraged to join the mesh, providing insight into network performance from their campuses to both regional and national network-based resources.
About KINBER
The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER) is a non-profit membership organization comprised of education, healthcare, economic development, libraries, public media and other non-profit organizations devoted to fostering collaboration through technology. Established in 2010 through a $99.6 million grant from the National Telecommunications and information Administration, KINBER is committed to delivering equitable, reliable and affordable access, space for collaboration, and digital tools for research and education to inspire tomorrow’s scientific discoveries, enable the exchange of ideas and culture among diverse populations, educate the next generation of citizens and revitalize Pennsylvania’s economy. For more information, visit KINBER.org.
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Source: KINBER