With ACCESS, the NSF has awarded $52 million over five years to five lead institutions and their sub-awardees to facilitate the program. Each project within ACCESS is independently managed yet highly cooperative; additionally, the ACCESS Coordination Office (ACO) supports the collective operation of the ACCESS projects, endeavoring to provide seamless experiences across a high-performance, innovative array of national computational resources.
How ACCESS is Organized
Led by Principal Investigator Stephen Deems, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), the Allocations Services project comprises three defined activities:
- allocation services
- innovative pilots
- a service model
Subawardees include the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Led by PI Shelley Knuth, University of Colorado Boulder, the End-User Support Services project comprises four defined activities:
- general user assistance
- allocation and utilization assistance
- end-user training
- a computational science support network
Subawardees include the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, University of Kentucky and the University of Southern California.
Led by PI Tim Boerner, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Operations and Integration Services project comprises three defined activities:
- operational support
- data and networking support
- cybersecurity support
Subawardees include Indiana University, the University of Chicago and Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.
Led by PI Tom Furlani, State University of New York at Buffalo, the Monitoring & Measurement Services project comprises three elements:
- monitoring and measurement operations
- service model
- data analytics framework
Led by PI John Towns, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the ACO provides coordination and support services, and staffing for top-level coordination and communications among the ACCESS awardees and with the public. This includes:
- support for top-level inter-awardee governance
- coordination of an external advisory board to the ACCESS awardees
- maintenance of the main ACCESS website
- coordinated community-building activities
The ACO itself doesn’t have a direct role in the management of the other projects and overall project execution, but facilitates and supports a model of shared governance. Subawardee: San Diego Supercomputer Center.