The CaRCC Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) Cyberinfrastructure (CI) working group has released a new report, Minding the Gap: Leveraging Cyberinfrastructure to Transform EPSCoR Jurisdictions, based on outcomes from the 2022 EPSCoR CI workshop series. EPSCoR is a National Science Foundation (NSF) program with “a mission to enhance the research competitiveness of targeted jurisdictions by strengthening science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) capacity and capability through a diverse portfolio of investments from talent development to local infrastructure.”
The CaRCC report includes recommendations for both the NSF and EPSCoR jurisdictions and complements the workshop Working Group’s 2022 assessment-focused report, A Baseline of EPSCoR Research CI Capabilities.
What does the report recommend?
Read more below to see a summary of the recommendations. To see the detailed recommendations, read the full report.
Recommendations for the National Science Foundation (NSF):
- Reestablish cyberinfrastructure (CI) as a required Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) Program core component
- Establish an NSF EPSCoR CI Council
- Investigate models of CI human resources capacity sharing for EPSCoR
- Enhance collaborative partnerships between EPSCoR, the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC), and Directorate for Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP)
- Incentivize proposal stage participation by technical/CI staff
Recommendations for EPSCoR Jurisdictions and Institutions:
- Formalize cyberinfrastructure (CI) assessment and planning
- Coordinate CI development across Research Infrastructure Improvement (RII) projects and jurisdictions
- Integrate regional network organizations
- Align foundational information technology
- Measure CI impacts
- Communicate the role of CI