System upgrades could boost university research exchanges, spur new jobs

By Anna Simon
Clemson bureau

CLEMSON — Clemson University will lead a $6 million cyber-infrastructure project using federal stimulus dollars for supercomputing upgrades that could help researchers bring new grants and knowledge-based jobs to the state.

The project will build cyber-environments to support advanced materials and life sciences research and collaboration at universities in South Carolina and Tennessee, said James Bottum, Clemson's chief information officer.

It will tie additional South Carolina institutions into a national supercomputing network and other resources, building on existing cyber-infrastructure investments in the state, Bottum said.

Other partner institutions include Claflin University, the College of Charleston, The Citadel, the Medical University of South Carolina, South Carolina State University, the University of South Carolina, the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Vanderbilt University, Bottum said.

“We believe this partnership between institutions, and the resulting benefits of our collaboration, to be an important step in advancing the competitive position of our state,” he said.

The grant — federal stimulus dollars from the National Science Foundation's Office of Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research, or EPSCoR — supplements state investments to continue building a supercomputing infrastructure capable of carrying enormous volumes of data between research labs.

Schools without this capability are at a disadvantage in competition for grants to fund the kind of research that has the potential to create new jobs as knowledge gained in the lab spawns new and better products in the marketplace, Bottum said.