The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) must create a greater degree of balance between national and local collaborations, according to the latest Stewarding Excellence report, which was released today.

To this end, the committee issuing the report offered a number of suggestions, such as restoring a Faculty Fellows Program in high-performance computing and initiating a campus plan for garnering support from the state and the university when ongoing national grants have ended.

One such grant is the Blue Waters computer system, $359 million project started in 2007. This project is anticipated to continue over ten years and will make Illinois the only Tier 1 academic center for high-performance computing in the nation.

Focusing more on local collaborations is expected to be challenging given the ongoing reductions in funds and the Blue Waters project, which places a large emphasis on top tier computing groups throughout the nation.

The focus of the committee was to explore the relationship between the NCSA and the University.

Located on campus, the NCSA has an annual budget of $50 million, which primarily comes from the National Sciences Foundation. The University and State of Illinois provide recurring financial support, as well as having given $120 million in nonrecurring funds since 2000, mainly for buildings. In addition, the University paid $8.1 million in FY10, mainly for staff salaries for the fulltime staff of 200.