SURFnet grant honoured to AMOLF, Nikhef and CWI

On 24 October 2012 SURFnet honoured the joint grant proposal of the FOM institute AMOLF, the National Institute for Subatomic Physics Nikhef and  Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (the national research institute for mathematics and informatics, CWI). This € 400.000 grant will enable the three institutes to improve their ICT infrastructure. The subsidies are granted as part of the SURFnet and SIDN initiative called Campus Challenge, which belongs to the GigaPort3 project.

The project makes a major upgrade of the local campus ICT infrastructure possible in terms of improved bandwidth, storage and co-location of services (putting company owned equipment in a third party server location). Also, several case studies will be carried out in the field of security, online collaboration, Big Data and Cloud Computing. The project will be executed in 2013.

All three institutes are located at Science Park Amsterdam, which makes them ideal candidates for the Campus Challenge grant. Carl Schulz, head of the ICT department at AMOLF and project leader of the joint 'Research Campus project' points out that he expects “increased collaboration between the neighboring research institutes”.

SURFnet and SIDN organizations use the Campus Challenge to stimulate the improvement of ICT infrastructure at their campuses, enabling users to take full advantage of the SURFnet network innovations, as realized within the GigaPort3 project. With their project the winners of the Campus Challenge provide best practices to other knowledge and research institutes in the Netherlands and they are a source of inspiration to others. Campus Challenge rewarded a total of 5 proposals with this grant.

Read also the press release of SURFnet.

picture 1: Shutterstock
picture 2: Heads of ICT: Carl Schulz (Amolf), Wim Heubers (Nikhef) and Niels Nes (CWI). Source: Amolf.