Adapted from a University of California San Diego announcement.

The University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute is part of a team of five universities awarded a five-year, $24.5 million agreement to build out the National Data Platform (NDP), a federated, AI-ready national data ecosystem that makes it easier to discover, access and analyze data—regardless of where it is stored.

Under the new award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), researchers will develop NDP into a national-scale network that builds on existing cyberinfrastructure to accelerate AI-integrated discovery and education. The University of California San Diego will lead the project in partnership with researchers from SCI, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Washington.

The award is one of two Category I projects announced on July 22, 2026, under NSF’s new Integrated Data Systems and Services program, part of an $83 million, agency-wide investment in national data infrastructure designed to accelerate AI-driven scientific discovery and strengthen U.S. research competitiveness in alignment with the U.S. government’s Genesis Mission.

“AI promises to transform scientific discovery, but that promise depends entirely on access to high-quality data,” said Manish Parashar, NDP co–principal investigator, the U’s chief AI officer and executive director of SCI. “Utah is helping build the scalable backbone of this national ecosystem—creating a seamless, turnkey cyberinfrastructure where researchers can find and access the exact data and models they need, along with the training to put them to work immediately.”

NDP, Parashar added, further enables Utah’s globally competitive AI ecosystem and complements state investments, including the Pro-Human AI Initiative, Redtail AI factory and the Utah Health AI Vault, which will update the widely used Utah Population Database to make it compatible with innovations in data science and AI.

About the project

The team will build on the existing NDP pilot, expanding it in collaboration with current NSF and local investments such as:

National Research Platform, a distributed research computing infrastructure
Tapis, an open-source platform for managing scientific computing and data
CloudBank, a connector to commercial cloud resources for researchers and educators
Redtail AI factory, Utah’s statewide AI supercomputer
Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, an intercollegiate high-performance computing facility in Massachusetts

The Utah team will initially focus on infrastructure and deployment, said Saleem Alharir, a SCI senior software developer and part-time doctoral student who has worked on NDP since its start. “We’ll shape how these components—developed across five universities—interact together, as one system,” Alharir said. “This integrated system will expand the capabilities launched in the pilot phase.”

To accomplish this, the U is expanding its NDP team. In addition to Parashar and Alharir, the group includes a mix of experts from SCI and its Center for High Performance Computing:

Bill Miller, senior director for research computing and data
Penny Atkins, director of research and science
Rohan Basu Roy, computing faculty member
Jess Tate, research scientist
Chad Lake, IT associate director
Developers: Yutian Qin, Pratik Kharade, Paul Fischer and Sam Liston

Looking ahead

Over the next five years, NDP will continue expanding the community of researchers, educators and institutions connected through the platform while growing the data resources, AI services and collaborative tools within a common, AI-ready environment for discovering, sharing and building on scientific data.

As a Category I awardee, NDP represents a significant step toward a more connected national research ecosystem—one where scientists across disciplines can more easily access the data, computing resources and AI capabilities needed to accelerate discovery and address complex challenges.

• Kelly Hermans Communications manager Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute
  ‭(706) 296-8037‬ kelly.hermans@utah.edu