MERIF: A Forum for CISE-supported Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructure projects Projects

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The computer and networking systems research communities recognize the importance of conducting verifiable, repeatable experimental research at scale on highly decentralized Midscale Experimental Research Infrastructures (MERI). In the past decade the Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) has supported multiple research infrastructure projects, including the Global Environment for Network Investigations (GENI), and NSF Future Cloud projects including CloudLab and ChameleonCloud. The potential of MERI projects to support transformative research grows as experiments are envisioned that span multiple infrastructures providing complementary services. These experiments place new demands on each infrastructure to coordinate development and implement common protocols and interfaces to support interoperability and ease-of-use by experimenters.This project seeks to create a community-led research coordination entity known as the MERI Forum (MERIF) to help achieve these objectives. MERIF will convene the CISE research infrastructure development community, experimenters, and other key stakeholders to communicate, cooperate and collaborate on MERI development. The project embarks with 6 primary responsibilities:1. Advancing the Federation and Harmonization of MERIF projects to enable and simplify their use;2. supporting Education and Outreach to integrate the use of the diversity of MERIF project resources in academic courses, including use by underserved populations;3. hosting workshops to focus on midscale infrastructure solutions for a future national computation fabric that enables research experimentation into future networking and computing architectures;4. convening regular research community meetings to identify the needs of MERI research users;5. reaching out to domain science communities to identity and initiate mutually beneficial collaborations between MERI projects and large-scale science and engineering projects; and6. engaging university Leadership to increase awareness and help sustain MERIF projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.