Aug. 7, 2025 \u2014 The National Center for Supercomputing Applications\u00a0and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were awarded a $25.8 million contract from the U.S.\u00a0National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency\u00a0(NGA) for high-performance computing in support of NGA strategic partnerships, advancement of artificial intelligence, and machine learning and logistics for data production on a global scale.<\/p>\n
NGA Director Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth announced the awarded contract in May at the 2025 GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis.<\/p>\n
NCSA has long partnered with NGA through the\u00a0New Frontiers Initiative<\/a>, providing support for geospatial and geo-intelligence research and education through its world-class computing resources and fellowship opportunities, and potentially saving months of time in data processing and analysis. Illinois is also a member of the\u00a0Taylor Geospatial Institute<\/a>\u00a0(TGI) Consortium, while NCSA is the home of TGI\u2019s U.S. National Science Foundation-funded\u00a0Regional AI Learning System<\/a>\u00a0(RAILS) to accelerate geospatial science and discovery.<\/p>\n \u201cThe New Frontiers Initiative is proud to continue our partnership with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency by providing state-of-the-art computing resources to spur innovation and speed to insight in support of NGA\u2019s national priorities,\u201d said William Kramer, executive director of NFI at Illinois<\/a>.<\/p>\n The new contract is Illinois\u2019 next step in offering technical support and expertise in efforts related to national security and preparedness. Previously, the university and NCSA supported the ArticDEM and EarthDEM project, and research and development efforts with NGA researchers in areas such as gravity modeling, bathymetry and flood inundation. The new contract will help modernize NGA Foundation GEOINT operations, including the creation of geoscience data, terrain, imagery and 3D geospatial-intelligence.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an important next step in Illinois\u2019 efforts to expand its contribution in national security and preparedness,\u201d Kramer said. \u201cThis relationship started over 10 years ago as NGA<\/a>, Illinois and others worked on ArticDEM, using NCSA<\/a>\u2019s\u00a0Blue Waters<\/a>\u00a0system and NGA-supplied satellite data to make high-resolution maps of the entire land surface. Illinois\u2019 expertise in high-performance computing, AI and geospatial research continues to help accelerate insight in these areas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 7, 2025 \u2014 The National Center for Supercomputing Applications\u00a0and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were awarded a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3164],"tags":[323,3284,8252,3487,3476,119123,119124,53,16,15,46072,119125],"class_list":{"0":"post-332000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-computing","10":"tag-high-performance-computing","11":"tag-hpc","12":"tag-national-geospatial-intelligence-agency","13":"tag-ncsa","14":"tag-nga","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-university-of-illinois","19":"tag-urbana"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115002020231906421","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}