Building on the success of the FY26 pilot, MDREN is seeking to expand participation from 11 pilot participants to 22 participants in FY27, broadening access to advanced computing resources and creating new opportunities for collaboration among Maryland researchers, faculty, and students. The expanded pilot will enable more institutions and research teams to evaluate high-performance computing capabilities without the significant investment typically required to build and maintain dedicated HPC environments.
The FY27 pilot will focus on several key objectives designed to improve the researcher experience and strengthen the program’s long-term sustainability. MDREN will continue supporting current pilot participants to ensure continuity for active research projects while selectively expanding participation to researchers who require access to shared HPC, GPU, storage, and advanced cyberinfrastructure resources.
Additional emphasis will be placed on improving onboarding processes through clearer documentation, user guides, test-job expectations, and support pathways. MDREN will also increase engagement with participants through periodic check-ins to better understand usage patterns, barriers to adoption, support needs, and successful research outcomes.
Throughout FY27, MDREN plans to work closely with participating providers to collect and analyze utilization metrics, including CPU, GPU, storage, account activity, and support metrics where available. These insights will help guide future service development and support planning.
The program will also focus on refining the user support model by improving processes for software installation, dependency management, environment migration, and troubleshooting. MDREN will continue exploring user-friendly access methods, including browser-based and JupyterLab-style workflows, to reduce barriers for researchers who may have limited experience with command-line interfaces.
Looking beyond the pilot, MDREN will begin developing a sustainability framework to evaluate potential future service models, support expectations, funding approaches, and cost-equivalency structures. These efforts will help inform long-term decisions regarding advanced research computing services across Maryland.
Finally, the FY27 pilot will align closely with emerging artificial intelligence initiatives by evaluating how HPC, GPU, and AI-enabled infrastructure can support broader University System of Maryland, statewide, and national research priorities. As AI continues to transform higher education and scientific research, MDREN is committed to understanding how advanced computing resources can best support innovation, discovery, and workforce development throughout Maryland.
MDREN appreciates the continued collaboration and enthusiasm of the pilot participants and looks forward to working with both existing and new participants as the program grows in FY27. Together, we are building a stronger foundation for research computing, AI, and data-intensive scholarship across Maryland.