NSF Issues IGERT Solicitation Focused on Big Data

Logo of the National Science Foundation (NSF). For NSF logo information visit: http://www.nsf.gov/policies/logos.jsp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

by Erwin Gianchandi, the Computing Community Consortium blog, April 23, 2012

The National Science Foundation (NSF) last week issued a new solicitation under its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, providing a specific track for training the next generation of researchers in computational and data-enabled science and engineering. The solicitation is part of the Foundation’s (and Administration’s) Big Data Initiative, which was announced last month.

According to the new solicitation (emphasis added):

“Building upon the IGERT platform, the purpose of this IGERT solicitation is to support new models in graduate education in which students are engaged in an environment that supports innovation to learn through hands-on experience how their own research may contribute in new ways to benefit society and to learn the processes for the successful implementation of such contributions.

Within the Cyberinfrastructure Framework for 21st Century Science and Engineering (CIF21) and IGERT, NSF recognizes the need to educate and support a next generation of researchers able to address fundamental challenges in 1) core techniques and technologies for advancing big data science and engineering; 2) analyzing and dealing with challenging computational and data enabled science and engineering (CDS&E) problems, and 3) researching, providing, and using the cyberinfrastructure that makes cutting-edge CDS&E research possible in any and all disciplines.