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NEWARK, NJ, January 5, 2022 – In support of an initiative to advance cyberinfrastructure for teaching and research throughout the southern New Jersey region, Edge’s Associate Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs, Dr. Forough Ghahramani, serves as a co-Principal Investigator with esteemed research counterparts from Rowan University to secure a National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CC*) Planning Grant, CC* Planning: Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Teaching and Research at Rowan University and the Southern New Jersey Region.

The awarded CC* Planning Grant invests in coordinated campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure (CI) improvements, innovation, integration, and engineering for science applications and distributed research projects.

Working in conjunction with Rowan University’s Dr. Tabbetha Dobbins, Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School–the grant’s Principal Investigator–and three co-Principal Investigators including, Dr. David Klassen, Professor and Chair of College of Science and Mathematics; Dr. Nidhal Bouaynaya, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies; and Dr. Mira Lalovic-Hand, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer; and Edge’s Dr. Ghahramani.

Explains Dr. Dobbins, “Early analysis on the gap between the needs of the University (and Southern New Jersey region) and the barriers for accessing state of the art cyberinfrastructure revealed the following needs: assessment and self-study to understand researchers needs, planning at the institutional level for financing CI needs, and student engagement and training related to computational research and experimentation.” Dobbins continues, “The project focuses on strategic planning in order to develop a coordinated approach that informs the communities in Southern New Jersey of the latest CI developments.  The project also assesses the stakeholders’ needs and Rowan’s capacity to support those needs, build partnerships with other institutions, and develop a robust plan that will enable Rowan to build shared and accessible CI.”

Dr. Ghahramani notes, “Edge is pleased to be a partner in the National Science Foundation funded campus cyberinfrastructure project with Rowan University to establish the strategy for advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) to support the university’s expanding mission, having recently attained “R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity” designation from Carnegie Classification, to lead at the national level, in cutting-edge research for scientific discovery and economic development. Rowan University has existing and emerging areas of research excellence that involves data-intensive modeling, analysis and computation, requiring the need for a cyberinfrastructure ecosystem that aligns Investments  in coordinated campus-level networking and cyberinfrastructure (CI) improvements with the specific needs of the existing and emerging domains of research, education, and workforce development. “

To learn more about Edge’s commitment to supporting local, regional and national research projects, visit https://njedge.net/research/resources-featured-research-reports/.

To learn more about the CC* Planning Grant, visit https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2126227&HistoricalAwards=false.