History

RCO History and Highlights

OSU has embarked on a collective path forward through the Research Computing Office that reflects a shared commitment to a centralized research ecosystem, providing equitable access to cutting-edge research computing, supercomputing, and AI technologies across the university. The following reflects an abbreviated RCO history and some key achievements, starting in 2022.

History

2022

OSU announced the $25M donation of an NVIDIA Supercomputer by Jen-Hsun and Lori Mills Huang to be installed in and operated from a new data center in the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. 

2023

  • OSU charged a 12-member Research Computing 2030 Task Force, chaired by Distinguished Professor Dr. Todd Palmer and primarily made up of faculty, to review OSU’s current organizational model for research computing, compare OSU to its peer institutions and recommend a new organizational model that can support computing resources at the scale of the Huang Complex supercomputer. Read the full report.

2024

  • After surveying 13 peer universities, the Research Computing 2030 Task Force found the trend at those universities was towards centralization to increase success with larger research opportunities, and recommended OSU move to a “centrally coordinated” model for research computing.
     
  • The university moved to implementing the Research Computing 2030 Task Force recommendations by charging a staff working group, the Research Computing Roadmap Working Group, to develop an implementation roadmap under the oversight of an Executive Committee co-led by Irem Tumer, Vice President for Research and Innovation and Andrea Ballinger, Chief Information Officer, and Vice Provost for University Information and Technology.

2025

  • The Research Computing Roadmap Working Group produced several key initial recommendations on critical aspects of the centrally coordinated research computing ecosystem. These included funding for Tier 3 data storage, a power increase for the Huang Complex Data Center to 2.0MW, data security, and a new Huang Complex Supercomputer Seed Fund program. Their recommendations also addressed the creation of a central research computing organization, along with the creation of a dedicated research computing data network, new university-wide Tier 2 storage services, the coordination of high-performance computing services across the university, the establishment of a portfolio of research computing data centers, and more.
     
  • The new Huang Complex Supercomputing Seed Fund was launched to support researchers with scaling up their GPU-based research computing projects to run on the Huang Complex supercomputer.
     
  • A memorandum of understanding was signed by the Provost, VPRI, CIO, VPFA/CFO, all the college Deans, and the Chancellor and Dean of OSU Cascades committing to moving OSU to a centrally coordinated research computing ecosystem.
     
  • Funding was allocated in the FY26 budget for the creation of a Research Computing Office.

2026