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Advanced research environment will spur economic development for Louisiana: Six state universities, led by LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, received funding to create a state-of-the-art research collaborative that will enhance Louisiana’s scientific and economic development capacity. Funding for this project, totaling more than $15 million, will create a bold new multi-institutional, multidisciplinary endeavor called the LONI Institute. The primary funding will come from the Louisiana Board of Regents’ Post-Katrina Support Fund Initiative, or PKSFI, and from significant matching funding from all institutions involved. The PKSFI program provides funding for state projects designed to boost scientific research and economic development for Louisiana following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Under this grant, the six research institutions collaborating on the project – LSU, Louisiana Tech University, Southern University, Tulane University, University of Louisiana-Lafayette and University of New Orleans – will receive $7 million throughout a five-year period, with a match of more than $8 million coming from the six universities. The LONI Institute will capitalize on the resources of the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, a high-speed, fiber optic network that connects supercomputers at the state’s major research institutions. LONI allows greater collaboration to tackle complex scientific research problems, and also gives Louisiana one of the most advanced computational and networking environments in the world. The six universities that will develop the LONI Institute are all LONI schools included as sites on the LONI network, along with the LSU Health Sciences Centers in New Orleans and Shreveport, and the Louisiana community and technical Colleges. “With this advanced network in place at the major research institutions in Louisiana, we are ready to take the next step and create a collaborative that allows people at those universities to fully use LONI to advance academics and business,” said Charlie McMahon, LONI executive director. “With the LONI Institute, we will create such an environment, maximizing the state’s research base potential.” The LONI Institute would not be located in a single building; rather, it would be a collaboration of researchers among the six LONI sites that creates a multi-disciplinary environment. The CCT will serve as the central hub of the distributed Institute, coordinating activities from LSU. With the LONI Institute, the six partner sites will conduct research primarily in biology, materials science and computational sciences. The Institute will use the advanced resources of LONI to drive research and education, which will lead to economic development for the state. The LONI Institute would create several new faculty, staff and graduate student research positions at the six universities. In addition, the Institute will initiate projects in cooperation with industry to advance economic development in the state. LSU will hire a scientific and economic development coordinator for the LONI Institute, who will coordinate these projects across the six member sites and will oversee the Institute’s economic development activities. CCT Director Ed Seidel, the principal investigator for this proposal, explained how the LONI Institute would catalyze Louisiana’s work to build up its cyberinfrastructure base. “Louisiana has made great investments in IT through its Vision 2020 initiative and through the creation of LONI,” Seidel said. “Now that we have the resources in place, we need to develop research projects and find the staff who can use the advanced technology in Louisiana to further academics and create more opportunities for business and industry so we can fully capitalize on these investments.” In the LONI Institute proposal, Seidel noted strong computational science efforts in Illinois produced an estimated trillion-dollar impact on the world economy, generating more than $120 million in corporate partnerships, $400 million in grants and spawning numerous companies in the past two decades. Seidel and the other project partners believe the LONI Institute could lead to significant economic development for Louisiana, making the state much more competitive for industrial partnerships with companies that depend on computing advances for their competitive edge. Industries that depend on computational sciences include petro-chemical, aerospace, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and many others. The LONI Institute sites currently are working to hire the coordinator, with plans to begin hiring computational staff scientists and faculty members for the Institute in the fall. For more information on LONI, please visit its Web site.