Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Teaching and Research at Rowan University and the Southern New Jersey Region

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Over the last several years, Rowan University has seen an increase in computational research, teaching, and innovation activities. Rowan faces a challenge in supporting the diverse and growing computational needs of its faculty, while also developing a plan for optimal investment in institutional infrastructure. To this end, Rowan University is planning for a cyberinfrastructure that can sustainably support this increased activity.

The work generates institutional knowledge that will allow Rowan, its community college affiliates & partners, and other regional universities to reach the full potential of its faculty and students in conducting larger scale transformative work and increase their competitiveness in data-driven computational research.

The CC* Planning Grant addresses the challenge of building cyberinfrastructure (CI). Early analysis on the gap between the needs of the university (and Southern New Jersey region) and the barriers for accessing state of the art cyberinfrastructure revealed the following needs: assessment and self-study to understand researchers needs, planning at the institutional level for financing CI needs, and student engagement and training related to computational research & experimentation.

The project focuses on strategic planning in order to develop a coordinated approach that informs the communities in Southern New Jersey of the latest CI developments, assesses the stakeholders’ needs and Rowan’s capacity to support those needs, builds partnerships with other institutions for sustainable regional based computing, and develops a robust plan that will enable Rowan to build shared and accessible CI.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.