Cyberinfrastructure

Technology at the University to accelerate research, enhance discovery, and improve scholarly productivity.

"Cyberinfrastructure (or, "CI") is a fabric of highly-connected systems for information and data acquisition, visualization, computing, storage, and associated human expertise serving end-to-end scientific and engineering workflows to improve scholarly productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible."

- NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure

An emerging program for research technology support

As the University moves to a Carnegie R1 operating tempo, the institution is setting the stage for collaborative cyberinfrastructure development that engages across administration, academic divisions and research disciplines. Research & Innovation, the Office of Information Technology and the faculty-led Cyberinfrastructure Committee are working together to provide effective technology infrastructure and support to meet the dynamic needs of research, scholarly and creative activities across campus.

National research funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Energy (DoE) have recognized the critical role that technology plays in all aspects of today’s science and engineering work. These organizations have pioneered large-scale cyberinfrastructure in the form of fast networks and supercomputing, and are now guiding efforts to coordinate investment in research technology support at all scales.

In keeping with these national developments, a robust and sustainable cyberinfrastructure remains essential for research efforts at the University to maintain the highest standards of scholarship, increase in scale and efficiency, and lead in scientific discovery.

Get involved!

Building the cyberinfrastructure we need at the University requires a new approach to investment and planning across lab, department, school, college, and institutional boundaries. While CI is currently being coordinated from within the Office of Information Technology, all research units are stakeholders. Investments in technology and human expertise are decadal in scale, transcending grant cycles and state budgets.

Contact Cyberinfrastructure

Research technology services

The University’s ad-hoc Cyberinfrastructure team is dedicated to supporting research through development of the following pilot technology services within a subsidized cost structure, in concert with faculty/project partners and early adopters.

Personalized consulting
Consulting with research leaders, PI's, faculty and support personnel to assess their current end-to-end research workflow needs. Visit the CiC page to contact the Director of CI.

Research data storage & transfer
Basic data storage and transfer assistance is available for campus researchers on a limited basis, funded by grants and generous donations to the University. Visit the data services page to find out more.

High performance computing
Pronghorn, the University's high performance computing cluster housed at Switch Reno-Tahoe supports large-scale scheduled batch computing, machine learning applications, and petascale research data storage

Research networking & science DMZ
A set of high-performance, private, and secure network circuits and security zones for research traffic, large data transfers, and Science DMZ operations. Visit the CiC page and contact the Director of CI for more information.

Research Computing Data Center Co-location
Providing server hardware co-location (e.g., rackspace, redundant power, performance connectivity, reliable cooling) within secure OIT-managed facilities

Software
Securing institutional licensing and management of software titles critical to research activity

The cyberinfrastructure plan

The faculty Campus CI Committee has created and approved a strategic document that outlines the scope and plan for cyberinfrastructure at the University. We welcome you to view this planning document and provide feedback.

View the cyberinfrastructure plan

Governance

Core cyberinfrastructure is currently financed by a combination of funds from the Office of Information Technology (OIT), the Office of Research and Innovation (R&I), generous donations, and extramural grants. Individual researchers, departments, and colleges can also participate to increase their dedicated resources within the cyberinfrastructure technology services portfolio with help from the cyberinfrastructure team.

Learn about the CiC

Cybersecurity

The University’s strategic approach to cybersecurity is a policy-driven data classification methodology, combined with strong technical safeguards and proactive user engagement with campus Information Security. This allows deployment of clear and concise data policies, along with an agile data governance environment, to provide a secure and adaptable framework for increasing the ability to do research on both regulated and non-regulated data. Information Security partners with our academic Cybersecurity Center to enhance training and education.

Learn about cybersecurity

Training and education

Learn more about cyberinfrastructure at the University and get both the training and education you need. Watch this space for future training opportunities and announcements!