International Research Network Connections (IRNC)

The United States research and education community communicates, cooperates and collaborates with colleagues in the global community.  Members of this community access remote instruments, data, and computational resources located throughout the world, often as part of international collaborations. Similarly, major NSF investments in large-scale science and engineering facilities located both inside and outside the U.S. are utilized by multi-national research and education collaborations. To support such activities, NSF solicits proposals for International Research Network Connections (IRNC).

NSF expects to make a small number of awards to provide network connections linking U.S. research networks with peer networks in other parts of the world. Links funded by this program are intended to support science and engineering research and education applications.   Funded projects will assist the U.S. research and education community by enabling state-of-the-art international network services similar to and interconnected with those currently offered or planned by domestic research networks.

Preference will be given to solutions which provide the best economy of scale and demonstrate the ability to link the largest communities of interest with the broadest services.