Brenda Marie Rivers
Internet2, a nonprofit networking consortium, has partnered with the National Science Foundation for a project aimed at studying the use of commercial cloud services for science and engineering research.
The two organizations will seek proposals for the Exploring Clouds for Acceleration of Science effort, which will address the viability of cloud computing technology for six science and engineering-related initiatives, NSF said Nov. 15.
The second phase of E-CAS will then run for another year and focus on garnering specific scientific findings from two out of the six projects.
NSF will allocate $3M for the effort and Internet2 will oversee the initiative’s two phases.
Manish Parashar, director of NSF’s Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, said the project will aid communities in leveraging cloud computing technology to catalyze scientific discoveries.
Internet2 President and CEO Howard Pfeffer added that the partnership will help facilitate the integration of cloud computing and cyber infrastructure for scientific research.
NSF has previously launched partnerships with cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure to conduct cloud computing research and development initiatives.
Google and AWS have agreed to serve as initial cloud computing providers for E-CAS.
