CC* Planning: South Florida Regional Data Science Cyberinfrastructure

South Florida (in the proximity of 50 miles from Miami) is home to 16 higher education institutions with a combination of public and private models across two- and four-year education settings. Many of them are small, minority-led, minority-serving, underrepresented, or under-resourced institutions of higher education. This project facilitates, engages, and assists minority institutions in South Florida in assessing and developing strategies to build sustainable campus cyberinfrastructure and catalog future expertise needs in data science as a part of building regional cyberinfrastructure. This collaborative project across Florida Atlantic University, Florida International University, Florida Memorial University, and University of Miami together with Bethune-Cookman University, Nova Southeastern University, and Miami Dade College is hosting three workshops to capture current and future expertise needs in science and engineering, strategies for creating sustainable campus cyberinfrastructure, and the science drivers. The University of Miami, in collaboration with Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University, is providing research facilitation, computing resources, and application support services to evaluate and benchmark science drivers. This effort enhances practical understanding of current and future expertise needs in science and engineering and sustainable campus cyberinfrastructure requirements among participating institutions. Partnerships with existing CC* programs such as MS-CC and Florida regional organizations such as Sunshine State Education and Research Computing Alliance will help expand the outreach and impact of the project outcomes across other institutions in South Florida. 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.