NSF Awards $156M in Grants

The National Science Foundation has awarded $156 million in research grants to help fund 309 different projects under a program designed to spur innovative uses of information technology.

Among the awards, the University of Florida received $13.6 million to build a computational grid network for researchers.

The university will lead a consortium of 15 universities and four laboratories in building the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, or iVDGL.

The grid will connect 40 locations in the United States, Europe and Asia, allowing scientists to view and analyze data from experiments in high-energy and nuclear physics, gravitational waves, astronomy, biology and other areas.

The University of Florida work is one of eight large projects that total between $5.5 million and $13.75 million, each awarded by the foundation as part of its IT research priority area. Others include projects for algorithm research, speech recognition and radar sensors.