CC* CIRA: Southwest Higher Education Knowledge and Technology Exchange (SHEKATE)

COVID-19大流行暴露了西方长途、中间一英里和最后一英里宽带连接的不足。 遥远的距离，稀疏的人口，和孤立的部落社区的特点为高等教育界的新挑战。 新的联邦资金和来自CARES法案的州拨款的涌入为规划、建设和提供网络基础设施的新基础提供了新的机会。 在大流行病爆发前的环境中，规划和协作是必要的，而现在，对领导组织进行区域范围的思考和规划的要求是重建西部山区的一个基本要素。 作为一个区域，多州，多机构的合作，SHEKATE准备参与，规划和实施新的网络基础设施，支持和改善科学的地方，连接是昂贵的，从研究人员隔离，并在区域首席信息官和国家的研究和网络合作共同努力，以解决区域规模的研究问题。SHEKATE的合作规划活动介绍和连接来自该地区的研究型大学的研究人员跨越州和国际边界，并与联邦和州宽带计划合作，在整个地区建立一个新的研究核心。由亚利桑那州立大学，太阳走廊网络和犹他州教育和远程医疗网络作为规划领导，SHEKATE会议活动的重点是研究人员启用城市生物识别，人工智能，西部宽带，网络基础设施的可持续性，和基本的组织结构，为在最复杂的城市和农村地区之一建立CI提供了新的方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the deficiencies of long haul, middle mile, and last mile broadband connectivity in the West. Long distances, sparse populations, and isolated tribal communities characterized new challenges for the higher education community. An influx of new federal funding and state allocations from the CARES Act released new opportunities to plan, build, and deliver a new foundation for cyberinfrastructure. Whereas planning and collaboration were needed and required in a pre-pandemic environment, the demand for regional-scale thinking and planning by leadership organizations is now an essential element in rebuilding the mountain west. As a regional, multi-state, multi-institution collaboration, SHEKATE is prepared to engage, plan, and implement the new cyberinfrastructure that supports and improves science in a place where connectivity is expensive and isolated from researchers, and where regional CIOs and state research and networking collaborations work collectively to solve regional-scale research problems. SHEKATE’s collaborative planning events introduce and connect researchers from the region’s research universities to cross state and international boundaries and to work with federal and state broadband initiatives to establish a new research core across the region. Led by Arizona State University, the Sun Corridor Network, and the Utah Education and Telehealth Network as planning leads, SHEKATE conference events focus on researcher enabled urban biometrics, artificial intelligence, broadband in the West, cyberinfrastructure sustainability, and the underlying organizational structures that inform a new approach to building CI in one of the most complex urban and rural regions.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.