Fort Hays State University was awarded an Infrastructure Grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant is for $350,000 with funds earmarked for equipment, training, and reporting at two NSF conferences and will be used over the next two years. Fort Hays State University joins the ranks of such schools as the University of Washington, Columbia University, and the University of Texas at Austin to name a few.
Quoting from the National Science Foundation website about the Infrastructure Grant-
Scientific discoveries are emerging at an accelerated pace, presenting new frontiers for exploration, stimulating innovation and economic growth, and driving the development of new tools and systems to support research. Likewise, the convergence of disciplines and the cross-fertilization that characterized contemporary science and engineering have made collaboration a centerpiece of the 21st-century science and engineering enterprise. As new scientific opportunities and processes have emerged, the Nation’s research facility requirements have also evolved and changed. In 2005, NSF estimated that academic institutions then had, at least, $3.6 billion in deferred projects to repair and renovate science and engineering research facilities (FY05 Survey of Science and Engineering Research Facilities.) As a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, NSF will invest $200 million in the Nation’s research facilities and research training infrastructure. This investment will advance the science and engineering research enterprise at many institutions.
The purpose of this program is to enhance the Nation’s existing research facilities where sponsored and/or unsponsored research activities and research training take place to enable next-generation research infrastructure that integrates shared resources across user communities. Consistent with NSF’s mission to strengthen the U.S. science and engineering enterprise, the program will:
- Update existing research facilities at institutions of higher education (including graduate and undergraduate institutions, among which are included community colleges) and other non-profit research organizations (e.g., independent research museums, independent research laboratories, and research consortia) in order to support research that can address the challenges of the 21st century.
- Enable academic departments, disciplinary and cross-disciplinary units, or multi-organization consortia to renovate research facilities through the addition or augmentation of cyberinfrastructure, other than general-purpose computing systems or data storage systems, to create environments that enhance research and integrate research with education.
- Improve access to and increase use of next-generation research facilities for researchers, educators, and students.
- Assist research organizations, including those that have historically received limited Federal research and development funds, to improve their science and engineering research environments.
The grant will allow FHSU to get a new border router, a new core router, and replace switches in selected buildings. To get the grant, the request had to be tied to STEM-related projects.
All federal grants have reporting requirements. FHSU will document current network throughput for each research project — as done currently and later after the bandwidth has improved.
The Department of Informatics will use the funds from the grant to aid in research in a new network traffic tracking tool called PerfSONAR, and research into Big Data using Hadoop, an open-source software framework for storing data and running applications on commodity hardware. Both projects are being worked on by Informatics instructors.
The Department of Physics will use the grant to fund work pertaining to their work on the effects of lasers on retinas, working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and collaborating Kansas State University instructors. K-State’s Beocat computing cluster, two or more computers used together to solve problems.
Department of Geosciences will continue work in climatology and also on the effects of climate on mortality rates.
Kansas Academy of Math and Sciences with Dr. Paul Adams will use the grant money in the teaching of a research class to the KAMS students using large datasets from earth sciences and from astronomy.
In non-STEM Projects, the new Institute for New Media Studies will get increased bandwidth in Malloy Hall for transmission of high-resolution video and audio.