The inaugural meeting of the TeraGrid Campus Champions program was held Monday, June 9, at the third annual TeraGrid ‘08 conference. This TeraGrid-sponsored program is designed to support campus representatives as the local source of knowledge about high-performance computing (HPC) opportunities and resources. This knowledge and assistance will empower campus researchers, educators and students to advance scientific discovery. "Many researchers have experienced an explosive growth in their computational needs,” said Jeff Gardner, University of Washington, Seattle. “Quite often they have little experience using platforms beyond their own department, nor are they even aware that resources such as TeraGrid exist and are freely available to them. Having a TeraGrid representative right here on campus is tremendously helpful in identifying potential users and steering them in the right direction." The inaugural members of the program include: Elizabeth City State University; National University; Navajo Technical College; Penn State University; Rutgers University; University of Alaska; University of Hawaii; University of Kentucky; and University of Washington, Seattle. The Campus Champion program will benefit college and university campuses by:

• Serving as a source of local, regional and national HPC and cyberinfrastructure information that will benefit research and education;
• Providing start-up accounts to quickly get researchers and educators using their allocations; and
• Being a conduit for the campus’ HPC needs, requirements and challenges with direct access to TeraGrid staff.

“We’re in the process of expanding these highly sought-after resources to other campuses,” said Kay Hunt, manager of Customer Services from Purdue University and Campus Champions Program Director. “We look forward to talking with representatives from any campus interested in supporting their local researchers and educators with advanced cyberinfrastructure.” Scott Lathrop, TeraGrid Area Director for Education, Outreach and Training, said this program complements TeraGrid’s overall efforts to broaden participation by reaching out to significantly larger and more diverse communities by directly working with people at diverse campuses across the country. “TeraGrid is excited to provide the Campus Champions with the support and information that will allow them to help local researchers and educators take advantage of the high-performance computing resources that are available to them.” The Campus Champions program is open to all colleges and universities; there is no membership fee to participate. To become a Campus Champion or to learn more about the program, please email the Program Coordinator at: tgcc-help@teragrid.org. The TeraGrid, sponsored by the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure, is a partnership of people, resources and services that enables discovery in U.S. science and engineering. Through coordinated policy, grid software, and high-performance network connections, the TeraGrid integrates a distributed set of high-capability computational, data-management and visualization resources to make research more productive. With Science Gateway collaborations and education programs, the TeraGrid also connects and broadens scientific communities. For more information, please visit its web site and www.teragrid.org.