CC*DNI Engineer: Enabling Research by Optimizing Cyberinfrastructure at NMSU and Beyond

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

The Cyber Infrastructure Engineer (CI Engineer) is a new role at NMSU. This role accelerates scientific discovery by bridging the gap between researchers, other CI professionals, and institutional leadership. This role helps researchers overcome technical barriers in areas like data acquisition, network throughput, computational analysis, software management, and the storage/retrieval of research data. To create sustainable and scalable solutions, the CI Engineer leverages two central IT divisions (Networking and Computer Systems), and also partners with faculty and graduate students within the various research projects. These partnerships increase scientific computing skills across campus. The CI Engineer role reports directly to the Chief Information Officer who has established a greater priority for CI to support research at NMSU. Additionally this new role is also uniquely positioned to give voice to research priorities within the broader University IT Governance process. NMSU's Cyber Infrastructure Engineer role is expected to expand and improve CI solutions for faculty researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates. This includes greater access to high performance computing, open science grid computing, high throughput networks, and better data storage/retrieval systems. CI solutions both on and off campus will be used to accelerate scientific discovery. Moreover, the University expects the CI Engineer to help broaden the general understanding of best practices for research-focused cyber infrastructure by participating in the growing community of CI engineers at universities throughout the country, and sharing CI solutions with other education institutions in New Mexico.