Pacific Research Platform Funded

The Pacific Research Platform, an extremely fast and secure network that aims to facilitate collaborative research across California and the country, has received a National Science Foundation grant for $5 million over five years. 

 

The origins of the Pacific Research Platform began in December 2014, when a large group of individuals from all over the West Coast gathered at Stanford for a one-day meeting.

 

Now, research organizations and universities on the West Coast and across the country are making an effort to link together scientific "free trade zones," termed Science DMZs. At the annual meeting of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), members of University IT, working with other universities, demonstrated what researchers will be able to experience for themselves when 100 Gbps links are available in more areas. 

 

The Pacific Research Platform, led by UC San Diego and UC Berkeley, will link a large number of West Coast universities, including the 10 UC schools, Stanford, San Diego State University, Caltech, USC, and University of Washington via the CENIC/Pacific Wave’s 100G infrastructure. In addition, it will reach out to the University of Hawaii System, Montana State University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern, and the University of Amsterdam. It will also connect with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Chicago's StarLight facility, and four national supercomputer centers (SDSC-UCSD, NERSC-LBNL, NAS-NASA Ames, and NCAR).

 

It is an exciting time for Stanford researchers to join with University IT teams and jump off the Pacific Research Platform into the large pool of big data and high performance computing.

 

For more information, please go to the CENIC website.