Joint NSF-CASC Workshop Summary: Envisioning NAIRR State and Regional Hubs for Educational Transformation

On March 9, 2026, CASC and NSF convened a joint workshop bringing together roughly 100 CI leaders, faculty, higher education administrators, regional education network leaders, and industry and philanthropy representatives to explore whether statewide and multi-state cyberinfrastructure consortia can serve as the right layer for transforming education through CI investment. Participants broadly affirmed the hypothesis while surfacing real challenges: a pre-workshop survey of 103 stakeholders found consistently high importance ratings across eight indicator issues (73–94%) paired with equally high difficulty ratings (56–86%), with funding and financial sustainability cited by 48% as the top barrier. The workshop drew on illustrative models including OARnet, the Pennsylvania Keystone AI+Quantum Factory, MGHPCC, Empire AI, and OneOCII, and closed with concrete action priorities: defining the value proposition of regional CI consortia for different audiences, advancing governance and sustainability models that don’t depend on short-term grants, engaging industry and philanthropy as genuine co-designers, and ensuring outreach reaches non-R1 institutions, community colleges, TCUs, HBCUs, and rural campuses. The full executive summary can be accessed at this link.