Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI) Project: Establishing the GENI Project Office (GPO)

The availability of state-of-the-art research infrastructure is essential to advances in all science and engineering fields. For many years, NSF has supported the development and deployment of research instrumentation and facilities. Shared-use facilities in particular, including those funded through NSF's MREFC account, have been instrumental in allowing science and engineering communities to explore compelling research "grand challenges". With emerging systems-level challenges and opportunities in computer science and engineering, the time is right for the computing research community to identify the large-scale research infrastructure needs critical, not only to advances in the field, but to US competitiveness in IT overall.

The Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) is calling for the computing research community to unite in the establishment of a Computing Community Consortium (CCC). CISE will support the CCC as a community proxy responsible for facilitating the conceptualization and design of promising infrastructure-intensive projects identified by the computing research community to address compelling scientific “grand challenges” in computing. The CCC will ensure broad community engagement in the identification of compelling research agendas and in the subsequent identification and refinement of related shared use infrastructure requirements.

One of the first responsibilities of the CCC will be guiding the design of the Global Environment for Networking Innovations (GENI). GENI is a facility concept already being explored by the research community, including investigators from the disciplines supported by CISE. GENI will complement ongoing CISE research investments in networking, distributed systems and other areas. The GENI facility is expected to increase the quality and quantity of experimental research outcomes supported by CISE, and to accelerate the transition of these outcomes into products and services to enhance economic competitiveness and secure the Nation's future.