MEDIA RELEASE
Thursday 8 September 2016
The National Computational Infrastructure extends congratulations to the nine new ARC Centres of Excellence following today's announcement of a $283.5 million commitment by the Turnbull Government.
NCI has a long and sustained record of supporting ARC Centres of Excellence, providing the essential high-performance compute, cloud and data services and expert support that underpin their research missions.
NCI is pleased to welcome to its Flagship Scheme two of the new Centres, which have been successful in their rebid from 2017 onwards, and which NCI has supported since 2011:
- ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes
- ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions
NCI Director, Professor Lindsay Botten, in congratulating the new Centres and their Directors, explained that the Flagship Scheme, established specifically to support Centres of Excellence, provides substantial, strategic allocations for high-impact research.
"NCI provides approximately 25 million compute hours—equivalent to $1 million annually in direct support to ARC Centres of Excellence," Professor Botten explained.
"The partnership between Centres and NCI is mutually important. NCI takes pride in enabling research at the international cutting edge and its association with the ARC's peak grant program," he emphasised.
In 2016, four ARC Centres of Excellence: Climate System Science (ARCCSS), All-Sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO), Ultrahigh-bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), and Nanoscale Biophotonics (CNBP) are supported under the Flagship Scheme.
In total, NCI supports research in 31 Australian universities underpinned by approximately 200 ARC-funded projects, fellowships, industry hubs, and six Centres of Excellence—with a combined annual value of approximately $50 million.
