Katie Berlent, strategy and operations lead for education at Google Cloud, said the company has extended its partnership with the National Science Foundation to offer research credits and training to principal investigators from minority-serving institutions.
Google Cloud will support NSF-funded projects through the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Minority-Serving Institutions Research Expansion Program, which awards up to $7 million in funding annually, Berlent said in a blog post published Thursday.
The company will deliver live, instructor-led courses and workshops to teach CISE-MSI program awardees about the fundamentals of cloud and the big data and machine learning capabilities of the technology.
The program is aimed at advancing research programs and fostering innovation in the sciences, engineering and technology fields at MSIs. It covers research areas such as cyber-physical systems, secure and trustworthy cyberspace and smart connected communities.
Fay Cobb Payton, program director in the NSF’s CISE directorate, said four of the 25 projects that secured funding in September intend to use Google Cloud for research in areas like artificial intelligence, deep learning, data science, cyber systems, distributed frameworks and wireless networks.
“This collaboration improves support and lowers costs for PIs, who get access to Google Cloud credits and resources like CloudBank, as well as training for researchers and students,” said Payton.
Alice Kamens, strategic projects and program manager for higher education at Google Cloud, said that allowing principal investigators to request cloud computing resources “resulted in a higher level of cloud adoption, which benefited their proposals and will now benefit their research.”
Principal investigators looking to apply for the next round of the program must submit their applications until Feb. 11, 2022.
