Funding through the latest NCRIS rounds will support Pawsey’s ongoing operations and include $1.5 million for its quantum computing program.
The Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre has welcomed continued investment from the Australian Government’s Department of Education through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS), supporting Pawsey’s role in enabling Australian research and innovation.
Pawsey was among a group of national facilities to receive support under the National Research Infrastructure (NRI) strategy. The funding includes allocations through the NCRIS 2025 Step Change Funding Round and the NCRIS 2026 Capability Gap Funding Round.
The outcome reflects the important role national digital research infrastructure continues to play in supporting Australia’s scientific capability. The funding will contribute to Pawsey’s ongoing operations and its support of researchers across a broad range of scientific and technology domains, including health, climate and materials sciences, for the coming year.
Pawsey also welcomes $1.5 million investment in its quantum computing program. This builds on previous NCRIS support for the program and will contribute to Pawsey’s continued delivering innovation in this emerging field.
Two Pawsey-led collaborative initiatives were also successful as part of the Step Change Funding Round. The Australian Federated Data Infrastructure (AFDI), developed in partnership with the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI), the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), AARNet, and the Australian Access Federation, received $30.3 million. This investment will help maintain critical national data storage capacity at a time of increasing demand and rising infrastructure costs.
A second initiative, Research Infrastructure Connected, secured $2.2 million to strengthen collaboration and connectivity across Australia’s research infrastructure landscape and researchers.
Pawsey supports Australian researchers to develop solutions to some of Australia’s most pressing scientific and technological challenges of today. Pawsey also acknowledges the broader NCRIS community supported through this funding process, including the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). Together, these organisations form part of the critical digital infrastructure ecosystem that supports essential research and scientific discovery across Australia.
Further details regarding the broader NCRIS funding announcement are available on this link via the Department of Education website.
