The National Science Foundation has awarded a $20 million grant to expand the NSF CloudBank, which aims to deliver commercial cloud computing for science and engineering research efforts.
The funding will advance the initiative to increase access to cutting-edge computing, artificial intelligence and other commercial cloud services, bolstering the U.S. science and technology workforce, NSF said Wednesday.
The University of California San Diego’s Supercomputer Center and Information Technology Services Division will collaborate with UC Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science and Society and the University of Washington’s eScience Institute under the CloudBank 2.0 project. The program will continue working with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure and NVIDIA’s DGX Cloud.
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Strengthening Public-Private Partnerships
According to NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, CloudBank 2.0 will use industry resources to strengthen public-private partnerships and accelerate innovation. “CloudBank 2.0 will further our mission to expand the ecosystem of advanced computing, data and AI services available to the U.S. research community — from leading research universities to smaller institutions,” he explained.
Advancing AI and Scientific Innovation
NSF’s investment in CloudBank 2.0 underscores its commitment to working with the private sector in advancing AI and scientific innovation. The program will fund around 500 research projects annually over the next five years and make computing more accessible to institutions with limited resources, such as community colleges and small universities. It will also boost workforce development by partnering with educational institutions to provide students with hands-on experience of the same cloud technologies used by global companies.
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