Collaborative Research: CyberTraining: Implementation: Medium: CyberPowder - Wireless Networking Workforce Development using the POWDER platform

The nation’s ever-increasing reliance on wireless and mobile networks and the next generation technologies that will enable them are national economic and strategic concerns. However, the workforce needed to innovate and develop these technologies is lagging. The recently published National Spectrum Strategy from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the United States Department of Commerce articulates the importance of real-world wireless cyberinfrastructure (CI) for education and research and calls out the need for training the “spectrum ecosystem workforce”. CyberPowder is a wireless networking CI program to develop educational material and provide training on the NSF-funded POWDER platform to address these concerns. CyberPowder broadens and democratizes the use and adoption of wireless networking cyberinfrastructure and provides research training for the wireless research community. CyberPowder directly improves wireless communication and networking education, which has been siloed into two non-overlapping disciplines of electrical engineering and computer science. By broadly disseminating curricula and training material, both through online means and via academic publication, and by training instructors at diverse academic institutions across the United States, CyberPowder influences how wireless is taught. The program democratizes access to wireless networking cyberinfrastructure by ensuring that cohort training recruitment casts a wide net, which specifically includes a broad range of universities, including minority-serving institutions. CyberPowder runs a train-the-trainer program and offers to co-teach hands-on labs on the POWDER CI. By broadening wireless training, CyberPowder better prepares the nation for cross-disciplinary, next generation research and technology advancement. CyberPowder develops wireless networking content and training material for both classroom teaching and hands-on cyberinfrastructure training. Classroom teaching focuses on developing and teaching curricula that address the inherent multi-disciplinary nature of wireless networking by co-teaching material that is traditionally siloed in either the computer science or electrical engineering disciplines. CyberPowder’s cyberinfrastructure training follows a novel cohort approach that combines online and in-person, research-focused training on the POWDER platform, followed by structured research support involving both the trainees and their faculty advisors. The cyberinfrastructure training program provides training on the use of wireless networking and experimental research fundamentals as well as specific advanced wireless technologies. To complete the process of enabling students to become researchers who produce high-quality, reproducible work, CyberPowder develops and promotes an artifact evaluation support program by working with relevant conferences to promote experimental research in the wireless networking community. An external evaluator, with research expertise specifically in the design and assessment of research training, evaluates and helps improve the CyberPowder program. This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Division of Computer and Network Systems within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. 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.