Innovating for a Future-Ready Oregon

The growing body of state-of-the-art science and engineering research in Oregon’s public universities will be on display next week at the annual Supercomputing conference, SC24, in Atlanta, Georgia—an event where world-class scientists, researchers, engineers, educators and students convene to share their work in high-performance computing (HPC) technologies and related domains such as networking and storage. This is the first time Oregon’s major research universities have collaborated at Supercomputing, and they are doing so under the banner of Link Oregon, Oregon’s network for research, education and government. The Oregon booth will highlight strategic, inter-institutional collaborations between Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon State University, Portland State University, and University of Oregon. Our presence at SC24 represents the broader work happening across the state, including among other Oregon higher education institutions, to accelerate collaborations in statewide research computing projects– in domains ranging from HPC/AI and precision genomic medicine and climate science, to earthquake predictions and cyberinfrastructure. 

As Oregon’s research and education network (REN) serving our state’s public and non-profit sectors, Link Oregon is the connective bridge facilitating many of these interinstitutional collaborations, which rely on our state-of-the-art, high-capacity fiber optic network. Networking services and connectivity are what we provide to our member institutions, but our mission is far broader than offering a high-speed, resilient “data connectivity pipe”. Oregon is home to a vibrant tech and research community, and we share the vision and belief held by non-profit ecosystem leaders such as TAO that for Oregon to grow its “innovation economy”,  it must make bigger, bolder bets in science and engineering; foster cross-institutional collaborations and enhanced sharing of resources, talent, and ideas; and harness emerging federal funding opportunities. 

We are making steady progress. Earlier this year, Portland State University led a successful National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal ($1 million) to develop a high-performance computing cluster named Orca, the Oregon Research Computing Accelerator. Orca will be a shared regional computing resource available for free to researchers and students at all Oregon institutions, with a focus on small and under-resourced institutions, making HPC accessible to Oregon’s rural, regional and minority-serving institutions. Orca is one of the initiatives we will highlight at SC24 next week. 

We also recently collaborated with eight Oregon universities to develop and submit a proposal to the NSF to build on this success and to establish the Cyberinfrastructure Alliance for Oregon (CIAO).  This new initiative will facilitate strategic planning for, and broader participation in world-class research, address acute inequities in cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources and services, especially at smaller and under-resourced institutions, and support educational programs to build a skilled workforce for Oregon.

Oregon’s research institutions are also focusing on innovation in quantum science and its interdisciplinary applications. Recent advances in quantum networking have revealed its transformative potential and we need a holistic approach to effectively integrate and manage both quantum and classical packet switched networks (i.e., hybrid quantum-classical networks) to bridge the “quantum divide”, so that quantum innovation isn’t harnessed just by the elite institutions and organizations. Recently, Link Oregon, Oregon State University, University of Oregon and ESnet, the Department of Energy’s dedicated science network, collaborated on a separate NSF funding proposal to develop a next-generation Network Operations Center (qcNOC ) model to democratize access to hybrid quantum-classical networking capabilities in campus and REN settings.

As Executive Director, I am representing Link Oregon as a co-Principal Investigator on all three of these projects. Advancing scientific innovation is at the heart of our collective interinstitutional work and so is the principle of building an accessible and inclusive innovation ecosystem. Whether it’s the high-performance computing clusters required for data intensive research or Quantum innovation, the importance of enabling Oregon’s smaller research colleges and minority-serving institutions access to the “infrastructure of innovation” cannot be overstated. As native Oregonian and two-time Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling expounded, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of good ideas!” 

The theme of our debut collective presence at SC24 is a simple statement: “Oregon Innovates”.  Oregon is known for its splendid mountains, pristine lakes and vast forests but our presence at SC24 is also a reminder that our state is home to world-class data-and-computing innovation across a breadth of scientific and engineering domains—from targeted genomic therapies in cancer treatment and bipedal robots to materials science for semiconductors, from ocean and earth science research to advanced optical networking. With enhanced strategic alignment across our state’s research institutions, private tech sector, government, national labs and federal agencies, Oregon is prepared to step up to the national stage as a premier tech innovation hub.

Link Oregon and technical leaders from our member universities will be at booth #750 at SC24, November 18-21, in Atlanta, Georgia. Please stop by if you are attending to say hello!

About the author: Steve Corbató is the executive director of Link Oregon, a non-profit research and education network (REN) serving Oregon’s public and non-profit sectors with statewide, high-speed middle-mile fiber optic broadband services. For more information, check out our website at www.linkoregon.org or drop us a note at info@linkoregon.org. Follow us on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/company/linkoregon. 

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