Research infrastructure: category II: mesa (multidisciplinary environment for scientific advancement)

Ended Cooperative Agreement Awarded Last action

Award ID
2608717
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$0

Award facts

Completion date
Place of performance
Tucson, AZ 85721, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

Abstract
The goal of project mesa (multidisciplinary environment for scientific advancement) is to build a shared, open-source platform in which scientific data from many fields are automatically described, organized, and connected, so any researcher can find and use them in minutes to hours instead of weeks to months. At its core, metadata-enabled scientific agents read each new dataset, attach descriptions drawn from community-curated standards, and recommend how IT can be combined with related information from other disciplines. IT will enable researchers spanning diverse disciplines, such as astronomy, biology, environment, public health, and computer science to expedite their discoveries and engage in seamless cross-disciplinary collaboration. The project will be developed and tested with established NSF-supported synthesis centers in environmental data science (esiil) and molecular and cellular science (ncems), and in AI in agriculture (aiira), as well as the international event horizon telescope (EHT) collaboration. The mesa outreach model ensures that benefits reach real use cases across the range of institutions with diverse levels of research activity and that graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and professional staff are trained in the design and use of trustworthy, agentic AI for science. Mesa will be implemented as a federated, cloud-native data-mesh and data lakehouse coupled to an agentic AI layer operating as an integrated data system and service. There are three coordinated technical objectives: agentic AI-powered metadata generation; cross-domain data integration linking datasets through interoperable apis, shared ontologies, and policy-driven governance; and agentic orchestration managing workflows and translating user intent into reproducible research objects. Mesa will operate on public NSF cyberinfrastructure accessed through access-CI (texas advanced computing center, open storage network, cyverse, and jetstream-2 cloud) and the integrated rule-oriented data system (irods) from the renaissance computing institute (renci). The two-year prototype effort includes automated metadata generation for astronomy simulations, life-science data repositories, multi-omics integration, precision agriculture, sensor networks, and environmental data synthesis to demonstrate platform capability. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are planned for this award.

Transactions

Action Obligated Date
Amendment -$4,617,408
Original award $4,617,408

Quick answers

Who received award 2608717?

2608717 was awarded to University Of Arizona by Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (National Science Foundation) on June 1, 2026.

How much is award 2608717 worth?

$0 has been obligated on 2608717.

Which agency awarded 2608717?

Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (National Science Foundation) awarded 2608717, with funding from National Science Foundation.

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