October 22, 2018 – When Prairie View A&M University agriculture researchers head to the farm, they’ll soon be able to share their findings quicker thanks to a new $499,964 grant provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). For CARC, this means agriculture researchers will have a faster, more accurate, and protected network to exchange data collected while out studying goats on the university farm or out in the community helping farmers figure out ways increase growth for their product each season.

The improvement is possible after several colleges across the University joined forces to create the Improve Network on Campus for Research and Education in Agriculture, Science, and Engineering (INCREASE) project. The tripartite of the College of Agriculture and Human Sciences, which includes the Cooperative Agriculture Research Center (CARC) also joined in on this collaboration.

Yoonsung JungThe INCREASE project was developed to upgrade the cyber infrastructure system used to house and share data amongst researchers around the campus. Along with fellow co-principal investigators from other campus research agencies, CARC Research Scientist Dr. Yoonsung Jung’s goal is to improve PVAMU’s network infrastructure and increase the rate at which research data is provided. The funds will be used to provide a 40 Gbps connection to Internet2.

This opportunity is a collaboration between the Center of Excellence for Communications Systems Technology Research (CECSTR), System to Enhance Cybersecurity for Universal Research Environments (SECURE) Center of Excellence, CRI Center for Computational Systems Biology (CCSB), and CARC.

The INCREASE team is in the early stages of the process. “This year, we are just planning. Next year, we are upgrading the cyber infrastructures. After that, we will add each college where people research data and

[improve] how quickly we can access it to share with the public.” According to Dr. Jung, this grant will be administered through the summer of 2020.

Ultimately, this grant will better allow CARC to fulfill its land-grant mission of teaching, research, and service. The INCREASE Project collaborators plan to apply for another $200,000 grant from the NSF in the future. The organization will consider the university’s process of putting the proposed improvements into action and review how students are educated in the areas of computing research and network infrastructure.

Taelor Smith

 

Taelor Smith
Communications Specialist
tasmith@pvamu.edu
(936) 261-5155