Dr. Suxia Cui
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded Prairie View A&M University $499,964 to revamp its computer network, all in the name of research. The project called INCREASE, or Improve Network on Campus for Research and Education in Agriculture, Science, and Engineering, should significantly improve upload and download times while allowing data-intensive research projects unrestricted access to the university’s network.
“The INCREASE project will improve the university’s existing campus research network with a science DMZ and provide improved connectivity and high bandwidth interconnectivity to other research universities and high-performance computing resources nationwide,” said associate professor and principal investigator on the two-year project, Dr. Suxia Cui. “Upon completion, it will allow researchers to effectively work in the fields of big data and data-intensive science. It will also enable data-driven research in the areas of cybersecurity, high-performance computing, computational chemistry, brain imaging, genomics, and bioinformatics, to name a few.”
Research groups from seven departments on PVAMU’s campus (Electrical and Computer Engineering, Agriculture, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Science, Engineering Technology, and Mathematics) will work together to design, implement, and test the INCREASE network. They will also have support from PVAMU’s Center for Computational Systems Biology (CCSB), Center of Excellence for Communications Systems Technology Research (CECSTR), Cooperative Agricultural Research Center (CARC), Systems to Enhance Cybersecurity for Universal Research Environment (SECURE) Center of Excellence, and the IT department.
“The first project year will focus on design. The second year will involve implementation and testing where we will invite the PVAMU community to gain experience on this network and give us feedback,” said Cui. “Computing technology has been advanced to an unbelievable level, and PVAMU will soon have the chance to build up its research capability with the INCREASE project.”
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-This story by Marchita Shilo originally appeared in Academic Insights.