OREGON INNOVATES
“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.“
– Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Laureate, native Oregonian
Oregon’s largest public research universities are home to leading-edge innovation in a variety of domains. Link Oregon provides state-of-the-art fiber connectivity services to these institutions, enabling high-speed secure collaboration and data exchanges within and across these universities. Below are a few of the many interinstitutional, interdisciplinary research initiatives we highlighted at SC24, the international conference for high performance computing, this year. Feel free to explore more!
The Future of Biomedical Research
Oregon Health & Science University’s (OHSU) Knight Cancer Institute and University of Oregon’s (UO) Phil and Penny Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact collaborate on interdisciplinary research spanning areas such as computer vision, natural language processing, computational biology and bioinformatics, data visualization, and interpretable AI-enabled health to advance cures for cancer.
Advancing Multi-disciplinary Science Research
The Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex (opening planned for 2026), situated on Oregon State University’s (OSU) Corvallis campus, will be a dynamic home to one of the nation’s most powerful supercomputers.
The 150,000-square-foot center, spearheaded by a landmark gift from NVIDIA founder/CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and his wife Lori Mills Huang, both OSU graduates, will accelerate work at OSU’s top-ranked programs in agriculture, computer sciences, climate science, forestry, oceanography, robotics, water resources, materials sciences and more with the help of AI. Once built, the center’s supercomputing capabilities will be available to other Oregon universities, helping advance HPC research and related innovation across the state.
Understanding our Changing Oceans
Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) is an advanced system of integrated, scientific platforms and sensors that measures physical, chemical, geological, and biological properties and processes from the seafloor to the sea surface in key coastal and open-ocean sites of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The OOI Cyberinfrastructure, which is operated by Oregon State University, manages and integrates data collected by the hundreds of instruments deployed across the arrays, linking the marine infrastructure to researchers, students and educators.
Oregon Research Computing Accelerator (Orca)
The Oregon Regional Computing Accelerator (Orca) will provide free-of-cost computing resources and cyberinfrastructure to colleges in the region, with a special emphasis on rural, regional and minority-serving institutions that otherwise wouldn’t have access to cost-prohibitive computational resources. The high-performance computing cluster at Portland State University is funded by a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Campus Cyberinfrastructure program.
Award # 2346732
Understanding Seismic/Tsunami Hazards
Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT) is the nation’s first subduction zone earthquake hazards center. The Center’s research involves analysis of large datasets using machine learning, earthquake and tsunami simulations using high-performance computing, and bringing a community of experts together to achieve common goals. CRESCENT facilitates these efforts using cloud-based cyberinfrastructure and access to a team of developers that support center activities. The first National Science Foundation-funded subduction zone earthquake science center is a large-scale collaborative effort with participating research universities in Oregon and across the nation and led by the University of Oregon.
Award # 2225286
Building Sustainable Global Internet Communities
Network Startup Resource Center, headquartered at the University of Oregon, provides lab-based technical training courses and network engineering assistance to improve affordable Internet access and services across the globe. The NSRC helps develop national and regional Internet infrastructure for collaborative research, education, and international partnerships, working directly with the indigenous network engineers and operators who develop and maintain the Internet infrastructure in their respective countries and regions.
Award # 1451045
Oregon’s Research and Education Network
Link Oregon is a facilities-based, middle-mile provider of high-speed, fiber-optic broadband connectivity to Oregon’s public and non-profit sectors. Sectors served include K-12, higher education, libraries, Tribes, public healthcare organizations, remote state offices, and other public and non-profit organizations and facilities across Oregon. Link Oregon’s advanced, high-capacity network will eventually serve more than 600+ locations across the state of Oregon, making it easier for these entities to collaborate, share information and deliver services to Oregon’s residents and visitors. Its founding members include the State of Oregon and four of Oregon’s largest research universities – OHSU, Oregon State University, Portland State University and University of Oregon.
