Student Fellowships

Students participating in the CI Compass Fellowship Program (CICF) learn about real-world cyberinfrastructure challenges, and how to begin solving them for NSF Major Facilities

The NSF Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence, CI Compass, offers a distinctive Student Fellowship Program for undergraduate students pursuing studies in computer science, information science, data science, applied mathematics and statistics, embedded systems, communications, and social sciences related to cyberinfrastructure.

Cyberinfrastructure, or CI, encompasses computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments, and data repositories, visualization environments, and people all linked together by software and high-performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs otherwise not possible.

“Many of these scientific discoveries would never happen without cyberinfrastructure so, seeing the gleam in the student’s  eyes when they see this connection between what they learn with classroom and how it can be applied to something that is impactful, that's very rewarding.” says Ewa Deelman, CI Compass PI. 
 

The fellowship program provides student fellows the opportunity to:

1. Learn about CI development and Major Facilities (MFs).
2. Develop CI-related skill sets that are important to the work of MFs.
3. Engage with CI Compass and MF personnel through a virtual training and research program, and related professional workshops/symposia.

The CICF Program consists of online technical and research skills training during Spring Semester and a potential project-based internship in the summer at a Major Facility or with CI Compass. The technical skills program introduces students to Python, software engineering, cloud computing, data workflows, and other relevant skills. The research skills program provides a contextual understanding of the MFs and related cyberinfrastructure.

At the end of the Spring semester, each student will present their research at the CI Compass Symposium.

“Before the program, I thought that doing research would be too hard, but the people in the program changed my mind about that, anyone can do research as long as they have a great team to help them.” says Nona Nersisyan, 2022 CI Compass Student Fellow.

The deadline to apply has been extended to October 27, 2022.

The application will ask for information about yourself, a cover letter, your resume/CV, and one letter of recommendation.

Visit for more information: Apply

Need more information? 

The Student Research and Fellowship Program is co-directed by Angela Murillo and Jarek Nabrzyski. For more information on the program, please email cicf@ci-compass.org.

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For Major Facilities:

CI Compass is currently recruiting Major Facility Partners for the CICF Program. We are currently seeking MFs who can provide student fellows with summer experiences at MFs starting summer 2023. If you are interested in becoming a partnering Major Facility or learning more about the program, please email (cicf@ci-compass.org) for further details.

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 _{¹ Stewart, C.A., Sims, S., Plale, B., Link, M., Hancock, D.Y., and Fox, G.C. (2010). What is Cyberinfrastructure? Proceedings for SIGUCCS’10. Norfolk, Virginia.}