ACO: An Open CI Ecosystem to Advance Scientific Discovery (OpenCI)

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign team provides coordination services as part of the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program. Science and engineering research and education depend upon an increasingly complex and distributed ecosystem of cyberinfrastructure (CI). The ACCESS program is an evolution of the National Science Foundation’s plans for coordination and operation of this CI and represents a fundamentally new approach to supporting this ecosystem.

The Open CI Ecosystem to Advance Scientific Discovery (OpenCI) provides the structures and services to support shared governance, community input, and communication and outreach for the five ACCESS service tracks (Allocations; End User Support; Operations and Integration; Monitoring and Measurement; and Technology Translation). OpenCI provides the tools and services for shared governance and horizontal leadership of the ACCESS Service Track awardees to create an inclusive CI ecosystem where Service Track PIs work with common purpose through well-defined decision-making processes, transparency in communication, and a focus on enabling science.

OpenCI provides four essential functions: 1) establishes and facilitates governance through the creation and support of the ACCESS Executive Council, the formal governing body of the ACCESS program; 2) cultivates expert guidance through the creation and support of the ACCESS External Advisory Board; 3) engages the community through coordination and augmentation of communications, outreach, and community-building activities of the Service Tracks; and 4) serves as a resource to NSF in its oversight of the ACCESS program across the areas of reporting, evaluation, and reviews.

OpenCI’s communication, outreach, and community-building efforts will broaden the participation of individuals and communities that have been underserved by the national CI ecosystem. Innovations in technology, research, and scholarship will be shared with the broader community that seeks to understand the role of CI in advancing society. The private sector will find new opportunities for collaboration, and through these opportunities, help improve the competitiveness of US companies in areas critical for the economy and the workforce.

OpenCI is led by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in partnership with the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego, and the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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.