Consortium for the Advancement of Research Computing

Consortium for the Advancement of Research Computing
Name	Consortium for the Advancement of Research Computing
Formation	2008
Type	Nonprofit consortium
Headquarters	Chicago, Illinois
Region served	United States, Canada
Leader title	Executive Director

Contents

Consortium for the Advancement of Research Computing is a nonprofit membership organization focused on coordinating high-performance computing, data science infrastructure, and research cyberinfrastructure across academic, national laboratory, and industrial partners. The consortium functions as a bridge among institutions such as University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Science Foundation, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to advance shared computing resources, workforce development, and reproducible research. Its activities intersect with initiatives led by Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, XSEDE, European Organization for Nuclear Research, National Institutes of Health, and leading universities to harmonize policy, standards, and resource allocation.

History

Founded in 2008 following stakeholder workshops convened by National Science Foundation program officers and administrators from University of California, Berkeley, the consortium emerged amid discussions involving Department of Energy, Sloan Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and representatives from Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton University. Early collaborations referenced architectures developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and scheduling solutions tested at Sandia National Laboratories, while governance models drew on precedents from Internet2 and the Open Grid Forum. Milestones include coordinated responses to funding calls from Office of Science and Technology Policy, joint workshops with European Commission delegations, and memoranda of understanding with Energy Sciences Network and National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

The consortium’s mission aligns with strategic priorities articulated by National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and the European Research Council: to expand access to high-performance computing, secure long-term preservation of research data, and develop cross-institutional training programs. Objectives emphasize interoperable middleware adoption influenced by projects at CERN, improved research reproducibility informed by standards from Digital Curation Centre, and workforce pipelines connecting students at University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and Carnegie Mellon University to internships at Los Alamos National Laboratory and industry partners such as Google and Microsoft Research.

Membership comprises research universities (including Harvard University, Yale University, Columbia University), national laboratories (including Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory), and private sector partners (including IBM, NVIDIA, Amazon Web Services). Governance operates through a board of directors with representatives from National Science Foundation grantees, chief information officers drawn from University of Michigan and University of Texas at Austin, and advisory committees modeled after Council on Competitiveness panels. Committees coordinate with standards bodies such as Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Internet Engineering Task Force.

Programs include shared resource allocation modeled on XSEDE allocations, cybersecurity training influenced by curricula from SANS Institute and Carnegie Mellon University, and regional workshops co-hosted with Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Services offer consulting on grant proposals aligned with National Institutes of Health data-sharing mandates, deployment of container platforms following best practices from European Grid Infrastructure, and certification programs co-branded with OpenStack and Kubernetes communities. The consortium also operates summer schools patterned after Software Carpentry and partnerships with Data Carpentry to support researchers at University of Washington and University of California, San Diego.

Collaborative projects span machine learning for climate modeling in collaboration with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, structural biology workflows shared with National Institutes of Health centers and Scripps Research, and genomics pipelines coordinated with Broad Institute. Large-scale simulation initiatives reference codebases from Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and visualization collaborations with National Center for Supercomputing Applications. International collaborations have included joint pilots with European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere and interoperability pilots with PRACE members. Cross-disciplinary consortia with Smithsonian Institution and Metropolitan Museum of Art explored digital preservation projects.

Funding sources include competitive grants from National Science Foundation, cooperative agreements with Department of Energy, philanthropic support from Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and Sloan Foundation, and in-kind contributions from corporate members such as Intel Corporation, AMD, and Google. Public–private partnership models drew on frameworks used by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and collaborative procurement examples from U.S. General Services Administration. The consortium’s financial oversight follows nonprofit best practices similar to those of Association of American Universities consortia and reporting aligned with Council on Foundations guidance.

The consortium’s work has been cited in policy briefs produced by Office of Science and Technology Policy and informed infrastructure plans at University of California campuses and national laboratories including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. Awards and recognitions include collaborative project grants listed by National Science Foundation and honors for workforce development programs recognized by National Institutes of Health training initiatives and Association for Computing Machinery education awards. Metrics of impact include increased shared allocations across members, adoption of interoperable data standards influenced by Research Data Alliance, and participation in international benchmarking efforts led by Top500 and Green500 lists.

Category:Research organizations in the United States