4221233 1153887 4221233 6812 UCF Research Cyberinfrastructure Events ucf-research-cyberinfrastructure-events https://events.ucf.edu/calendar/6812/ucf-research-cyberinfrastructure-events/ CloudBank 101: Getting free commercial cloud credits for your research and classroom through the NSF ACCESS Program Wed, 07 Oct 2026 13:00:00 -0400 Wed, 07 Oct 2026 14:00:00 -0400
US United States
en-US Commercial cloud platforms offer capabilities that are hard to replicate on campus: specialized hardware, managed AI services, quantum backends, globally distributed infrastructure, and always-on hosting for gateways and community tools. The obstacle is usually funding and procurement, not technical need. CloudBank, an NSF-funded service platform, removes that obstacle. U.S.-based researchers and educators can receive allocations in dollars, usable across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud, at no cost to the researcher or the department.

In this one-hour session, the CloudBank team will walk UCF researchers and instructors through what the service provides and, most importantly, how to get an allocation. Topics include the ACCESS allocation tiers and award ceilings (Explore up to $10,000 per year, Discover up to $37,500 per year, Accelerate and Maximize up to $75,000 per year); what a successful request contains, including a cloud cost estimate, allocation type, supporting grant information where applicable, and a CV for the PI and any co-PIs; and what happens after an award, including automatic cloud account provisioning through the CloudBank Portal, federated login with ACCESS credentials, managing authorized users, and automated usage tracking and spend alerts.

The session highlights use cases of particular interest at UCF: running and evaluating AI and foundation models on commercial platforms, and estimating what they will cost before committing; quantum computing through IBM Cloud, where CloudBank provides a route our researchers do not otherwise have; and teaching and training, including CloudBank Classroom, a browser-based JupyterHub for coursework that requires no local setup by students. Presenters will also address fit. CloudBank is aimed at modest-scale AI workloads, small research production infrastructure, specialized hardware, distributed-systems experiments, and hosted gateways, while large-scale compute and GPU-heavy jobs are better served by on-premises ACCESS and NAIRR resources.

Audience: Open to all UCF faculty, researchers, postdocs, graduate students, and instructors. No prior cloud experience required; attendees new to commercial cloud are especially welcome.

Presented by Shava Smallen, Rob Fatland, Eric Van Dusen

]]> Event Instance url https://events.ucf.edu/event/4221233/cloudbank-101-getting-free-commercial-cloud-credits-for-your-research-and-classroom-through-the-nsf-access-program/ Office of Research Cyberinfrastructure Events Team ResearchITEvents@ucf.edu Workshop/Conference nsf accessCloudBankresearch computing Happening As Scheduled Public