ICER provides the following research and grant support services to MSU faculty, staff and students:
- Application and Programming Support
- Grant and Research Collaborations
- Letter of Support
- Facilities Statement
- Data Management Plan
- Budget Justification
- NSF REU Supplements
Application and Programming Support
ICER Research Consultants are available to assist new and experienced HPC users to achieve their research goals. Research Consultants have extensive scientific computing experience and pursue research goals in collaboration with MSU faculty. General consultation is available free of charge. Long-term project work can be purchased at an hourly rate or as a fraction of a FTE. For more information about consulting rates, please consult the ICER Academic Research Consulting Service web page and, if you are interested in this service, contact the ICER interim director, Metin Aktulga, to request a quote.
Research Consultants are available at weekly open office hours, from 1-2 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays. You can also contact us to set up an appointment to discuss your computational research needs.
Grant & Research Collaborations
In addition to collaborating with individual research consultants, research faculty can increase their grant's overall competitiveness by including information about the cyberinfrastructure resources and services provided by ICER. ICER will provide the following documentation for grants:
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Letter of Support: NSF letters of support have a required structure; download template. Letters of support for other funding agencies typically allow more flexibility; download template. Please download the provided templates, modify them according to your needs, and send your draft letter to the ICER Director along with your request.
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Facilities Statement: Compute, storage and consulting resources are summarized in the Statement of High-Performance Computing Facilities at Michigan State University (download PDF version, Word version).
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Data Management Plan: If your grant proposal requires a data management plan, the Data Management Template outlines ICER’s data management roles.
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Budget Justification: Please read through the Buy-In Template, which provides useful verbiage for requesting hardware acquisition funds within your proposal.
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NSF REU Supplements: Researchers with existing NSF grants or applying for new or continuing grants may apply for an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) supplement to support up to two undergraduate research assistants. If your grant has a computational or data science research focus and you wish to participate in the ICER/CMSE Advanced Computational Research Experiences for Students (ACRES) Summer REU, please contact the ICER interim director, Metin Aktulga, to discuss your participation. In addition, ICER can provide you with the following documentation:
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A description of student activities, including research and technical training support provided through the ICER/CMSE ACRES REU.
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Participant support budget estimate and budget justification. Suggested allowances for student stipend and other support costs are $9K/student.
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Applying for new and continuing grants, ICER interim director, Metin Aktulga, can provide a letter of support.
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Existing NSF grants, contact your Cognizant Program Officer. Send one-page project summary including intellectual merit and broader impact for feedback to the Cognizant Program Director.
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Important Dates: For funded REU supplements, you will need to provide the ACRES team with a student research project description no later than September 1st of the year prior to the summer ACRES will be hosting your REU students. See examples of past project descriptions here: https://icer-acres.msu.edu/.
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For more information on how ICER can support your proposal, or for more information about the services and support ICER can offer, please contact us.