Expanding the role of the REN in Nevada: kicking off research and education engineering

As research and education technology practices evolve, the need for regional coordination, engineering, and engagement across institutions is changing rapidly. The Nevada System of Higher Education’s (NSHE) NevadaNet established a new mission area in 2022-23 to respond to these changes: Research and Education Engineering.

“We repurposed two vacant positions associated with legacy systems management into the Research Engineering team,” says NSHE CIO and NSHE System Computing Services (SCS) Executive Director Anne Milkovich. “This allowed us to pivot part of the organization towards serving advanced technology use for research and education in Nevada.”

Modern challenges for higher education in the technology space are stacking up: remote computing access and hybrid/remote teaching are now necessary capabilities, set against the ‘perfect storm’ of high IT personnel turnover, cybersecurity threats, and volatile budgets.

“In order to facilitate research technology growth in the state, leverage and support existing infrastructures like the Nevada Seismology, Wildfire, and Climate Network, and pilot key services at scale, we really needed a dedicated team at the System level to start engaging,” comments NSHE Director of Infrastructure Services and NevadaNet, Kirk Fitzgerald.

This new team is focusing on several objectives: (1) facilitate surveys and assessments of research computing and data (RCD) capabilities at Nevada institutions; (2) assist institutional leadership in planning and development of RCD programs and teams; (3) lead and contribute to statewide technology infrastructure development for research, teaching, and science-based public service; (4) support and sustain key sciencebased natural hazards data networks; and (5) represent Nevada in regional and national RCD communities and initiatives.

“Engineering contributions made by this team to high-performance computing (HPC) and cybersecurity education projects in Nevada are already paying off,” says Principal Research Engineer Scotty Strachan. “NSHE is actively enabling cybersecurity classes between the Universities and K-12 school districts in Reno and Las Vegas.”

One of the early project efforts by the NevadaNet Research Engineering team is evolving the architecture for the Nevada Cyber Range, an NSF-funded cybersecurity training initiative led by faculty members at the University of Nevada, Reno.

“This work applies not just to the Cyber Range but also to any research computing system in the state,” states NSHE Senior Research Engineer Zachary Newell, who is the primary architect behind the Nevada Cyber Range, “Besides delivering interactive cybersecurity education, this project gives us the opportunity to pilot cutting-edge ‘Teaching DMZ’ zero-trust networks that integrate school-district-compliant content filtering for student development environments.”

Infrastructure and services developed by the NSHE Research and Education Engineering team will remain in an ad-hoc, best-effort posture until project elements are viewed as stable solutions that can be deployed at scale. The long-term objective is to leverage this research and development work for future enterprise solutions for the state and higher education. This mission area is an exciting expansion of NSHE SCS and NevadaNet operations, and is providing immediate value for researchers and technology educators across the state’s higher-ed System.

Nevada’s System of Higher Education (NSHE) is a superpower. The connected higher education system in Nevada allows all institutions to benefit from each other. When one of our great eight institutions in Nevada succeeds, it translates into success for all of the institutions. NSHE’s institutions are reflective of the state’s population and are committed to supporting the state population to meet the current and future social, economic and workforce needs of a highly diverse state. Five of NSHE’s colleges and universities are federally recognized Hispanic or Minority serving institutions. www.nshe.nevada.edu