Rick Adkins, Mathematical and Computer Sciences, has a leadership role in a US National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure program grant.
The project, based at the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences, has been awarded approximately $1.1 million in funding to develop a commonwealth-wide secure network and related cyberinfrastructure to interconnect Pennsylvania colleges and universities.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project is titled the Pennsylvania Science DMZ Supporting Under-resourced Colleges and Universities (PA Science DMZ). In computer networks, a DMZ, or demilitarized zone, is a network that separates one network from other untrusted networks such as the internet.
The project aims to address challenges identified in a planning grant that proposal partner KINBER, a nonprofit organization committed to working with communities, governments, businesses, and schools to advance digital equity and inclusion, was awarded in 2022.
Adkins joins collaborators from Swarthmore College, Lafayette College, and the Penn State University Digital Foundry at New Kensington. Together, they will work to implement the planned PA Science DMZ to improve the cross-institutional research projects that have been identified as being hampered by the lack of secure connectivity between institutions.
“We are ready and excited to leverage the grant's new cyberinfrastructure resources and are looking forward to seeing its impact on our data-intensive applications and science research programs,” Adkins said.