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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 28, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 30
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Special Features:
MINORITY-SERVING INSTITUTIONS TO
JOIN ACCESS GRID COMMUNITY
Representatives of seven minority-serving institutions (MSIs) will gather
at
Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida, on July 23 and 24 to
receive the hardware and training needed to connect them with Access Grid
users around the world.
The Access Grid connects people, supercomputers, virtual environments,
scientific instruments, educational tools, and large datasets through a
seamless, integrated, persistent environment operating over high-speed
networks.
Connecting these institutions to the Access Grid is made possible by the
Advanced Networking with Minority Serving Institutions (AN MSI) program.
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), AN MSI is program of the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Education,
Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(EOT-PACI). EOT-PACI is the outreach effort of the two NSF PACI partnerships:
the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) and the National
Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI).
"I am thrilled to see how the AN-MSI program continues to fulfill one of
its
primary goals to assist minority-serving institutions in developing the campus
infrastructure and national connections necessary to decrease the digital
divide," said Allison Clark, Assistant Director of Digital Equity Initiatives
for NCSA. "Last year was the training and deployment of cluster computing;
this year we have shifted our focus to Access Grid nodes. The projects of the
AN-MSI program have allowed us to increase the participation of MSIs in
high-performance computing activities and in the research of the
Alliance."
The seven institutions joining the Access Grid community through the AN-MSI
program are:
- Bethune-Cookman College
- Clark-Atlanta University, Atlanta
- Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, FL
- Florida International University, Miami
- Fond du Lac Tribal & Community College, Cloquet, MN
- Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX
- University of Texas at El Paso
Professor Tiki Suarez at Florida A&M University said the school is thrilled
to
be selected as the recipient of an Access Grid node. "This technology will
encourage our educators and students to integrate all the benefits and tools
of the Access Grid into their instruction, research, and communication
activities," she said. "We can offer research faculty the opportunity to
increase their competitiveness for research grants and enhance their teaching
strategies."
During the two-day meeting in Daytona Beach, NCSA will provide grid
training,
including equipment information, an overview on the latest release of Access
Grid software, and hands-on work with the equipment. Various Access Grid sites
across the country will welcome their peers at Bethune-Cookman College to the
Access Grid community.
About NCSA
NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) is a national high-
performance computing center that develops and deploys cutting-edge computing,
networking and information technologies. Located at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Additional support comes from the state of Illinois, the University of
Illinois, private sector partners and other federal agencies. For more
information, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.
About the Access Grid
For more on the Access Grid, see www.accessgrid.org/ .
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