Idaho INBRE Program- UI Equipment Upgrade for INBRE Data Science Core

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PROJECT SUMMARY This Idaho INBRE Program Administrative Supplement will fund equipment that improves the high-performance computing infrastructure in our Data Science Core facility at the University of Idaho (UI). This equipment will enhance the accessibility and impact of this IDeA-built core in the Institute for Interdisciplinary Data Sciences (IIDS). The IIDS is the legacy of 20-years of NIH IDeA investment through both the INBRE and COBRE funding mechanisms and is now independent from NIH direct support. IIDS is one of three sites across Idaho that together comprise the Idaho INBRE Data Science Core and serves investigators statewide. In FY21, IIDS core facilities supported the research of 83 faculty and 190 trainees from 9 different Colleges, 30 academic departments, and 10 centers and institutes. Of these 273 researchers, 70% of them relied in some way on computational infrastructure. IIDS is also a nexus of statewide collaboration, offering services to all Idaho INBRE Network institutions. IIDS houses state-of-the-art equipment, high performance computing infrastructure, secure data storage, and technical expertise in bioinformatics, data science, and software engineering. The requested equipment purchase will upgrade and enhance the previous and ongoing NIH IDeA investments in Idaho infrastructure, equipment, and faculty/staff related to bioinformatics, high performance computing and data science. The addition represents necessary upgrades to our existing capacity for secure data storage, large scale bioinformatics analyses, and hardware suitable for AI applications. We have experienced dramatic surges in demand for computation and data storage and anticipate that this demand will grow further as Idaho INBRE research activity increases. Our current data storage systems (900 Tb) are over 90% full and the proposed equipment will effectively double our capacity while simultaneously replacing aging equipment. In addition, this equipment request will add critically needed capacity to accommodate the increase in demand for genome assemblies using long read sequencing data from our Pac Bio sequel II. Finally, GPU cards will meet the growing demand for hardware suitable for deep learning and other AI research, a capacity not currently available at other sites within the Idaho INBRE network. Collectively, this INBRE Administrative supplement will add important equipment to enhance the capabilities for biomedical researchers state-wide.