The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is a partner in the Fabric for AI-Driven Science, a five-year, $24.5 million project selected by the U.S. National Science Foundation to help build the nation’s future data backbone for AI-driven research. Led by the Morgridge Institute for Research in Madison, Wisconsin, the project was announced as part of a broader $83 million National Science Foundation investment through the Integrated Data Systems and Services program. As a partner institution, Nebraska will lead cybersecurity for the fabric and contribute to its day-to-day operations.The project aims to weave together distributed data, AI and computational services into a single fabric that reaches researchers and educators across the country. The project connects data repositories, computing resources and national cyberinfrastructure, including the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, so that scientists can spend more time drawing insight from data and less time managing the infrastructure underneath. The project builds on more than two decades of distributed-computing work by the Open Science Grid Consortium and the Center for High Throughput Computing, including the Pelican and Parternship to Advance Throughput Computing platforms and High Throughput Condor.“Leading cybersecurity for a national effort like FabAID lets Nebraska contribute to the community building the next generation of research infrastructure for AI,” said Derek Weitzel, principal investigator for the Nebraska component of the project and research associate professor in the School of Computing and Holland Computing Center. “It opens doors for our researchers and students to take part.”Nebraska’s role: keeping the fabric running and keeping it secureA national data fabric only works if researchers can depend on it. Nebraska’s Holland Computing Center will lead the fabric’s cybersecurity and contribute to the operations that make that possible:Cybersecurity. The center will lead the design and maintenance of the security practices that protect the fabric and the researchers who rely on it, so that data can be shared across institutional boundaries without compromising trust. Strong security is essential for a system meant to serve institutions large and small in all 50 states.Operations. The center will contribute to running and monitoring the distributed services that make up the project’s fabric, working to keep data moving reliably across the many institutions, repositories and computing sites the fabric connects. The center has years of experience operating national research cyberinfrastructure.Experience in other cyberinfrastructuresHolland Computing Center has operated infrastructure like this for years. Through the Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics and the National Research Platform, it has helped run and secure national-scale, multi-tenant cyberinfrastructure used by researchers at institutions across the country.These systems raise the same challenges as the Fabric for AI-Driven Science: keeping distributed services running reliably, coordinating across many independent sites and protecting shared resources that many institutions depend on. The Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing runs a set of shared services where monitoring, accounting and identity management keep the system secure, and the National Research Program applies the same approach across a distributed platform rich in graphics processing units for AI and data-intensive research. The center also operates infrastructure for the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics, which develops the software and data systems the high-luminosity Large Hadron Collider era will depend on.That experience is what makes Nebraska a strong fit to lead cybersecurity and support operations for the project.Holland Computing Center ready to help researchersBeyond its cybersecurity leadership and operations role, the Holland Computing Center is ready to help researchers put the Fabric for AI-Driven Science to work. The center’s staff can help scientists and educators, at the University of Nebraska and beyond, connect their data and workflows to the project’s fabric and take advantage of the shared data, AI and computing services it brings together. Researchers interested in using the project’s infrastructure are encouraged to reach out to Holland Computing Center at hcc-support@unl.edu.The Holland Computing Center is the University of Nebraska’s research computing center, providing high-performance computing, storage, and research cyberinfrastructure expertise to researchers across the University of Nebraska system and to national collaborations. Learn more at hcc.unl.edu or contact hcc-support@unl.edu.Related coverageLearn more about the project at fabaid.io.This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under award no. 2609485. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
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