Unveiling ICER’s 2024 Strategic Plan 

The Institute for Cyber-Enabled Research (ICER) has unveiled a new strategic plan. As the home of Michigan State University’s high-performance computing center, ICER supports computational and data science research and instructional activities. Extensive feedback was gathered from ICER’s staff and User Advisory Board, the Office of Research and Innovation, and partner units to craft a plan that serves varied purposes.

Dr. Brian O’Shea, Director of ICER, pinpointed the heart of the strategic plan as tackling three pressing issues relating to research computing and data. In summary, these issues are:

1. The increasing complexity of cyberinfrastructure, which is driven by the growing breadth of researchers’ needs.
2. The broadening of participation in research computing, particularly in scholarly areas where there is not a strong pre-existing culture around these types of methods.
3. The increasing need for custom software both as a tool for research and as an artifact of the research process.

“The goal of the ICER strategic plan is to identify MSU's key challenges relating to research computing and research data and to lay out concrete actions that ICER staff can take, often in partnership with other units on campus such as the MSU Libraries and IT Services, that can address these challenges,” explained O’Shea.

Additional goals described in the strategic plan include promoting the success of ICER staff and minimizing the climate impact of MSU’s research computing efforts. Each goal is accompanied by specific actions that will be taken in pursuit of the ideal outcome and metrics for success that can be used to quantify progress.

 “We are confident that this strategic plan will guide us as we address the MSU community's computational needs over the next several years," stated O’Shea.