Project Grant 2311355

The University of Illinois was awarded a $1,777,362 project grant from the National Science Foundation Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering federal grant program (CFDA 47.070) to develop real-time orchestration infrastructure for multi-messenger astrophysical observations. Through this four-year award ending June 2027, the university will create the Hopskotch Enabled Real-time Messaging Service (HERMES) platform to standardize communication and coordination between siloed astrophysics facilities during gravitational wave, gamma ray burst, and neutrino detection events. Subawards totaling $575,304 were provided to the Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University, Cornell University, University of California Santa Barbara, and Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network to contribute expertise and resources toward the collaborative project goals. When completed, the HERMES platform is intended to streamline real-time data access across experiments like LIGO-Virgo-Kagara and IceCube for more efficient electromagnetic counterpart identification from multi-messenger astrophysics events, enabling new scientific discoveries.