Sept. 19, 2025 — The National Science Foundation (NSF), through its highly-competitive Major Research Instrumentation program, has awarded North Dakota State University (NDSU) $3.85 million to acquire and deploy a supercomputer for artificial intelligence (AI) research.

NDSU CCAST Datacenter where the new supercomputer will be located. Credit: NDSU.

The system will be named Bison, after one of the most powerful and iconic symbols of the Great Plains. Bison will transform the capabilities of NDSU to conduct leading-edge research, which has implications in public policy, agriculture and food security, healthcare, energy, environment, quantum information science and more.

“This investment positions NDSU at the leading edge of AI and high-performance computing,” said NDSU President David Cook. “The Bison supercomputer will enable our faculty, staff and students to explore new frontiers of discovery and innovation, while deepening partnerships across North Dakota and beyond.

“Bison will transform research at NDSU and expand access to advanced computing across campuses and tribal colleges statewide, opening a broader horizon of opportunity for all.”

NDSU is home to a growing and diverse ecosystem of AI research, spanning over sixty research groups across all colleges and research units. Its researchers are actively engaged in areas ranging from core AI theory to applied AI in engineering, agriculture, health and education.

Bison is designed for highly intensive computation and for AI training, fine-tuning and inference tasks. It includes powerful GPUs and a data storage system optimized for AI workflows and is a significant upgrade to the current advanced research computing resources at NDSU.

The system will be housed in the datacenter of the NDSU Center for Computationally Assisted Science and Technology (CCAST), a leading academic computing facility in North Dakota. Bison’s initial operation is targeted for summer 2026.

“GPUs have become a necessity for AI research,” said Khang Hoang, the grant’s principal investigator. “In other, non-AI scientific areas, high-end GPUs are also a game-changer, allowing researchers to tackle problems that are impossible with CPU only.

“I am excited about the new research Bison will enable and about the challenging problems it will help solve.”

At NDSU, Bison will serve immediate needs in multiple science and engineering areas, including social sciences, computer science, bioinformatics, biomechanics, fluid dynamics, physics, chemistry, materials science, civil and environmental engineering, among others. It also will enable education and training of the next generation of scientists and engineers, technologists, and research computing users and professionals.

The new supercomputer will allow NDSU to provide computing resources to researchers at other institutions within the North Dakota University System and the tribal colleges in North Dakota. Bison will facilitate collaboration with partners across North Dakota and the nation, with a focus on advancing AI research and expanding access to high-performance computing.

Hoang is CCAST executive director and adjunct professor of physics. Co-investigators of the grant are Armstrong Aboah, assistant professor of transportation engineering; Trung B. Le, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; Juan Li, professor of computer science; and Daniel Pemstein, professor of political science and public policy. Other senior personnel are Ana Heilman-Morales, Ying Huang, Dinesh Katti, Kalpana Katti, Dmitri Kilin, Svetlana Kilina, Zhikai Liang, Simone Ludwig, Harun Pirim, Bakhtiyor Rasulev and Changhui Yan. All are from NDSU.

Source: NDSU