Private Sector Program and Economic Development

With more than 25 years of proven leadership in serving a wide variety of communities, NCSA has built a reputation for accelerating real science and engineering, deploying innovative machine architectures at extreme scale, and advancing the fields of data-intensive computing, cybersecurity, and visualization. Our successes in these areas are due to our outstanding staff of more than 200—one of the largest and most experienced at any HPC center worldwide. NCSA is uniquely suited to serve communities in ways ranging from applied research to consulting to commercialization. Following are descriptions of specific categories of capability:

Leveraging HPC and big data for industry: NCSA has worked with more than one-third of the Fortune50®, in sectors including manufacturing, oil and gas, finance, retail/wholesale, bio/medical, life sciences, astronomy, agriculture, technology, and more. NCSA's Private Sector Program currently boasts 26 partners. PSP's core mission is to help its partner community gain a competitive edge through expert use of modern, high-performance digital and human resources.

Traditional sponsored research projects are now complemented by:

• dedicated, non-government high-performance computing resources, including the iForge cluster
• a high-tech, mobile consulting team
• software/hardware benchmarking and development in production environments
• code-performance teams
• public-private partner leadership
• blended partner applied research and development

Annual meeting bring together representatives from industry (including but not limited to current partner organizations), University of Illinois research faculty, and NCSA's expert staff for presentations and discussions of shared challenges and new paths to innovation. (See information on industry meetings from: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001).

NCSA Consultancy: Technical and application consulting is offered to industry users and vendors who may need specialized assessment, benchmarking, and performance improvements in their workflows. With experts in computing, networking, data, CAE, visualization, and more, NCSA staff complement a deep base of academic researchers at the University of Illinois and beyond.

National Digital Engineering and Manufacturing Consortium: NCSA is a founding organization for a high-profile public-private consortium focusing on providing high-performance impact to small and medium manufacturers. NDEMC's Midwest Pilot is a $5 million limited-term project that has quickly become a business model to emulate for other innovation programs, such as the National Network for Manufacturing Innovation. Private investors are Deere, GE, Lockheed Martin, and P&G. Public funding comes from the U.S. Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration and the State of Ohio. Technical providers are NCSA, Ohio Supercomputer Center, and Purdue University.

International Industrial Supercomputing Workshop: NCSA is a founding organization of IISW, a confederation of supercomputing colleagues from more than 10 countries that collaborate and commiserate about bridging the political and funding gaps unique to the deployment and operation of supercomputers at scale for use by industry. Other founding centers are from South Korea, Germany, and Ohio State University.

Key contacts

Merle Giles, Director
mgiles@illinois.edu, 217-244-4629

Evan Burness, Program Manager
burness1@illinois.edu, 217-244-0642