| NSF Org: |
OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | October 9, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 25, 2016 |
| Award Number: | 1560770 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Edward Walker
edwalker@nsf.gov (703)292-4863 OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | November 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | April 30, 2017 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $300,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $300,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
506 S WRIGHT ST URBANA IL US 61801-3620 (217)333-2187 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
506 S. Wright Urbana IL US 61801-3620 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | XD-Extreme Digital |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
The project will identify, document, and analyze effective practices in establishing public-private partnerships between High Performance Computing (HPC) centers and industry. With the market analysis firm IDC, the project will conduct a worldwide in-depth survey of 70-80 example partnerships of HPC centers of various sizes, in the US and elsewhere, that have been involved in partnerships with the private-sector.
The project is important to our national economic competitiveness because prior studies have shown that the use of HPC can boost industrial innovation and competitiveness, benefiting the firms in question and their economies. Additionally, it directly supports the Presidential executive order 'Creating a National Strategic Computing Initiative' by addressing one of its key guiding principle to 'foster public-private collaboration'. In particular, the project outcomes will help HPC centers, whose existence serve as an important nexus in our nation's HPC hardware, software, and human investments, improve their innovation and effectiveness in engaging industry for knowledge transfer and workforce development.
In summary, the project implementation will have the following scope and goals:
* Evaluate the nature and status of existing public-private, HPC-centered partnership programs.
* Collect and analyze practices that have worked well in individual partnerships and in the aggregate, along with practices that have not worked well and issues impending greater success, in order to capture the state-of-the-art and associated best practices in these partnerships
* Produce and disseminate a quantitative-qualitative report that can serve as a reference guide and compendium of effective practices and lessons learned.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The objective of this project is to gather information that can be used to identify worldwide best practices for partnerships between HPC centers and industrial organizations. This information, which was gathered with extensive surveys and interviews, is used to describe the relevance of such partnerships and to form findings of best practices. The report synthesizes the survey information into a set of findings and best practices for creating, expanding and maintaining open HPC Center's industrial engagements.
Three overall themes run through the report. First is consistent recognition of the importance and benefits of the collaborative work byt all involved parties. Second, many of the industrial partners value the expertise of the HPC centers as much as the resources. Third, a key success factor is proactive, bi-lateral, timely, and consistent communication by all parties engaged in collaboration.
The report is 115 pages of content and published at http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/assets/pdf/industry/Industry_Report_2017.pdf. A set of presentation materials was created along with the report for use to summarize the study methodology, findings and best practices.
Wide spread disemmination of the report included sharing it with thousands of organizations and professionals. A link to the press announcement is at http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/news/story/new_study_uncovers_best_practices_for_effective_partnerships_between_public
One of the key outcomes of the report for open HPC centers serious about supporting industrial partnerships, is to consider the following best practices identified in the report.
- Should adjust their mission statements to add the focus on industry engagement;
- Choose HPC systems with industry as well as science in mind;
- Focus on domains the HPC center knows well;
- Hire a person with business experience to lead the industrial partnership program;
- Assign experienced people to work with industrial users;
- Involve industrial users in the peer review process;
- Provide opportunities for both open and proprietary research If possible;
- Expect a significant number of industrial partners to be first-time users of HPC;
- Prepare for and address cultural and communication gaps in a timely manner;
- Engage marketing/PR professionals to help recruit industrial partners;
- Set expectations among all parties clearly at the start; and
- Streamline the process for intellectual property and contract agreements.
The benefits of the partnerships reported in the survery for industrial partners include increased competitiveness, new discoveries and insights, and faster development of products and services, among other advantages. For HPC centers, the benefits include unexpected new pathways for science, increased motivation and retention of their scientific and computational personnel, and additional funding to support additional staff and resources.
The key trends uncovered in this study point to a future with the following traits:
- The continued primacy of scientific research at most academic and other HPC centers, with a majority of centers also supporting industrial R&D. A minority of centers will continue to focus entirely on science and research and not provide access to industrial users.
- Increasing recognition by national/regional political leaders of HPC's ability to accelerate industrial and economic. competitiveness as well as scientific progress. Consequently, there will be mounting pressure on many publicly supported HPC centers and laboratories to provide HPC access for industrial R&D as well as scientific research, and to include options for both open and proprietary industrial work
- Increasing competition among nations and global regions, based on the industrial domain expertise of their HPC centers.
- Greater outreach by public funding organizations and HPC centers to industry of all scales that could benefit from HPC.
- A substantial number of industrial users relying on HPC centers for the companies' first introduction of HPC. In the present study, nearly half [45.2%] of the industrial partners surveyed said that their collaboration with an HPC center was their first experience using HPC.
- More national and regional HPC strategies that include access to HPC centers for indigenous industries with high potential for economic impact.
- A growing need to present government funding bodies with rationales that include benefits for industry and national economies as well as for science and national security.
- Where multiple national and regional HPC centers exist in a country, more efficient division of labor based on their respective expertise in specific industrial domains.
- A growing need to document the outcomes of industrial HPC usage, especially by disseminating success stories and quantifying financial returns on investments (ROI) and returns on research (ROR) associated with industrial HPC use will be important to help justify HPC investments to stakeholders and expand the offering of HPC resources to industry.
- The desire for streamlined contractual processes for partnerships between HPC centers and industry, especially via standard contract language that alleviates IP challenges and the use of umbrella agreements that allow HPC centers to engage existing partners in new projects.
- Stepped-up marketing and public relations/public affairs capabilities by HPC centers, as needed.
Last Modified: 09/01/2017
Modified by: William T Kramer
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