Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, US, have received a five-year, $14.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to expand the university's widely used online science and engineering gateway, nanoHUB.org.
The Purdue-led Cyber Platform, a part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology, will assist researchers across the globe by developing a virtual society that shares simulation software, data and other innovative content to provide engineers and scientists with the fundamental knowledge required to advance nanoscience into nanotechnology.
'Thousands of times a day the leading researchers come to Purdue through the globally unique tool of nanoHUB,' said the university's president Mitch Daniels when announcing the grant. 'The new NSF investment is an affirmation of the brilliance of nanoHUB's Purdue creators and of its worldwide scientific significance.'
Annually, nearly 250,000 users in 172 countries participate in nanoHUB, an online meeting place for simulation, research, collaboration, teaching, learning and publishing. The nanoHUB provides a library of 267 simulation tools, free from the limitations of running software locally, used in the scientific computing cloud by more than 12,000 people every year.