CIARA mission statement: The Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA) evolves to support FIU’s vision to be a leading urban public research university focused on student learning, innovation, and collaboration. CIARA’s mission is to perform and support high quality research, enhance student learning and academic excellence, and lead FIU’s technological cyber-infrastructure from the campus edge to the rest of the US and internationally. CIARA, in the Division of IT and the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (KFSCIS), is host to several federally funded cyberinfrastructure projects that contribute to FIU’s university wide research and education mission. CIARA is a flexible point of interconnection among a diverse population of research scientists, graduate students, and faculty. These interconnections foster a domain-specific tailoring of frontier technologies to support faculty research and, in the process, improve undergraduate and graduate education. Institutions affiliated with CIARA use cyberinfrastructure technology to tie together science and engineering research and education communities in the U.S. with peer communities in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, as well as the rest of the world.

CIARA Purpose Statement: CIARA exists to support research and education between the U.S., Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa by managing several federally funded cyberinfrastructure projects that contribute to FIU’s university wide research and education mission. CIARA operates a production international research and education network, referred to as AmLight, that connects the continents of North America, South America, Africa and Europe. AmLight has been recognized by the U.S. National Science Foundation as critical network infrastructure to support U.S. major astronomical facilities in Chile. CIARA’s purpose is to serve as a flexible point of interconnection to bridge the technology gaps between researchers and IT practitioners by leveraging its resources, as well as in the Division of IT and KFSCIS, to support FIU faculty excel in research, discovery, and scholarship. CIARA invigorates scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students through its mentorship programs, where students apply what they have learned in the classroom to real-world production-level network engineering and software development practices by working and learning alongside researchers and professionals.