CC-NIE Network Infrastructure: Enabling Big-Data Science Collaboration at Georgetown

Georgetown University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

Georgetown is upgrading high-end networking across the main and medical center campuses to support science faculty. These faculty routinely collaborate across the campuses, within and across disciplines, and with colleagues at other universities, at-large private research facilities, and National Labs as they research complex physics, genomics, functional magnetic resonance imaging, Internet search indexing, and other computationally-intensive topics. These network improvements enable end-to-end 10 Gbps connectivity among GU's science buildings, campus backbone, off-campus data center, Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) Gigapop, and Internet2. 1Gbps or 10Gbps connections are provided to select locations within the buildings. The ability to share and analyze large datasets, and disseminate findings advances scientific and technological understanding. Improvements in GU's science facilities have led to increased applications and enrollments of undergraduate and graduate STEM students. This infrastructure is designed to further bolster STEM research and education at GU. Investments during the past 5 years have doubled the size of faculty in the Computer Science Department; built a new building for biology, chemistry, and physics; and enhanced other infrastructure to support research, including support of a computational core facility, creating an isolated security research network, and increased data storage capacity. This award is enabling over 300 Main Campus and Medical Center researchers to collaborate and broadly share their work on campus, connect equipment, enhance their ability to collaborate with researchers off campus, as well as benefit extensive basic sciences research on the contiguous medical campus.