Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Lt. Governor Jon Husted announced a new broadband expansion project located in the City of East Cleveland. The pilot project launched today will connect residents to reliable, low-cost high-speed internet.

“East Cleveland, like many other urban and rural communities, has lacked both the infrastructure and access to low-cost broadband for many residents. This new project plans to provide both the infrastructure and access for up to 2,000 families,” said Governor DeWine. “All of the partners in the public-private partnership have come together to bring access to high-speed internet for families throughout East Cleveland.”

The broad public-private partnership, spurred by BroadbandOhio, includes Case Western Reserve University, Connect, Cuyahoga County, Eaton Corporation, East Cleveland City Schools, GE Lighting- a Savant company, Greater Cleveland Partnership, InnovateOhio, Microsoft, OARnet, PCs for People, University Hospitals, and the Urban League of Cleveland.

“As soon as I learned that most families in East Cleveland didn’t have access to high-speed internet, I told the InnovateOhio team we’ve got to fix this,” said Lt. Governor Husted. “Starting today, more than 1,000 Ohio families, with many more to come, will have the opportunity to access affordable, high-speed internet – allowing students to do their homework online, parents to work online and families to be better able to participate in the modern economy, education and healthcare systems.” [Read full announcement on OARnet | NEWS]

Joining Forces to Advance Institutional Research
Computing is an essential component of research and education across a variety of fields, especially those involving data-intensive science. Many small, mid-sized, and under-resourced campuses have compelling science research and education activities that would benefit from better access to advanced cyberinfrastructure (the combination of advanced computing and data storage systems with knowledgeable people, all connected by fast networks). However, they lack the necessary in-house expertise to make use of it. Without this expertise, researchers at these institutions must navigate a complex and daunting set of choices and decisions without guidance, particularly when the required resources are outside of their campus environments.

Networks and regional collaborations, such as the Eastern Regional Network (ERN), aim to simplify multi-campus collaborations and partnerships that help advance the frontiers of research and innovation. Through a partnership of educational institutions, research facilities, regional network providers, and Internet2, the ERN is committed to providing layered and transparent access to shared data and computing facilities. “Regional network providers play a significant role as facilitators and user support for the smaller institutions,” says Dr. Forough Ghahramani, Associate Vice President for Research, Innovation, and Sponsored Programs, Edge. “For example, Edge uses a collaborative network to enable conversations across member institutions to leverage existing relevant shared resources to support researchers and help identify joint funding opportunities.” [Read the full article at Edge |News]

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many archeological digs were put on hold, as collaborating researchers from various international universities could not travel to conduct fieldwork as a team. In California, the technological possibilities of the Pacific Research Platform not only enabled researchers at the University of California San Diego and their partners at the University of Haifa (UH) in Israel to go ahead with their expedition but also drastically accelerated data analysis times.

UCSD researchers had planned to fly to Israel to work in person with their UH counterparts on the underwater excavation of a late Stone Age Neolithic village located off northern Israel’s Carmel Coast. But quarantine requirements would have turned a three-week trip into a two-month-long commitment filled with idle time. Instead, UH researchers conducted the fieldwork while UCSD researchers helped process and analyze the findings virtually. [Read the full article at the CENIC | Blog]