In 2017, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) awarded UNH, UMaine, and the University of Vermont a grant to develop and promote the growth of CyberTeams, all under the leadership of the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (MGHPCC). These teams are collections of Research Computing Facilitators (RCF) - comprising faculty, staff, and students - who partner across state boundaries to assist each other in solving technical computing challenges in support of scientific discovery.
CyberTeams supported nearly 40 projects in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts. This project benefitted dozens of students and faculty mentors in the exchange of working together.
The NSF recognized the New England CyberTeams model as an exemplary approach to research computing facilitation. Other 2019 NSF CC* CyberTeam grant award recipients from other states adopted this same model. Enterprise Technology & Services is well-represented within the project.
The CC* CyberTeams Project started in May 2017, continued into 2020, and will continue for at least one additional year as it transitions to supporting other regions in the United States.
The project’s initial goals included supporting 14 projects in each participating state over the project lifetime of three years, resulting in 56 total projects across four states. In the process, this group created and published details on how other institutions across the country can adopt the NE CyberTeams model. This team established a portal mechanism to track projects, mentors, students, and outcomes. As a side project, the team established a new community resource, called Ask.CI, which is a Discourse site to answer questions that people have about cyberinfrastructure (CI).
NE CyberTeams sponsored several projects to help UNH research activities. UNH’s involvement includes training more RCFs to help increase the research output associated with CI-utilizing research activity.
For more information, go to https://necyberteam.org.
