NIH / NCATS, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ADVANCING TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCES
AI-driven Research Cyberinfrastructure for translational science
AT A GLANCE
- End-to-end ownership: architecture, deployment, modernization, and ongoing operations
- Unified research platform: HPC, AI, Kubernetes, data infrastructure, and hybrid cloud
- Secure, production-grade environment supporting advanced biomedical research
- Enables researchers to focus on science rather than infrastructure operations
THE CHALLENGE
Scaling advanced computing for translational research
Translational research depends on more than raw computing capacity. Scientists need reliable access to specialized software, accelerated computing, large-scale data, and interactive environments that can support diverse biomedical workflows — from drug discovery and genomics to imaging and computational analysis.
The challenge was to transform evolving scientific requirements into a cohesive production service: architecting the right capabilities, integrating heterogeneous technologies, maintaining operational continuity, and scaling securely as research demand and national priorities expanded. NCATS required a resilient Research Cyberinfrastructure capable of supporting data-intensive science, simulation, advanced analytics, and AI within a secure federal operating environment. The platform had to evolve continuously without compromising availability, compliance, or researcher productivity.
NCATS required a resilient research cyberinfrastructure capable of supporting data-intensive science, simulation, advanced analytics, and AI within a secure federal operating environment. The platform had to evolve continuously without compromising availability, compliance, or researcher productivity.
WHAT WE DID
A Unified Research Cyberinfrastructure, Built from Scratch
spinTwo architected, deployed, and operates NCATS' Scientific Computing Infrastructure — a production-grade Research Cyberinfrastructure that unifies High-Performance Computing, AI, Kubernetes, enterprise storage, high-speed networking, virtualization, and hybrid cloud resources into a single operational platform.
- 1
Unified computational platform
Established a centralized execution environment capable of supporting traditional HPC, GPU-accelerated computing, large-scale data analytics, and modern AI workloads — including machine learning, deep learning, generative AI, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). - 2
Seamless workload orchestration
Integrated Open OnDemand, JupyterLab, Kubernetes, and Slurm into a unified execution model where interactive notebooks, AI services, cloud-native applications, and traditional HPC workflows all leverage the same backend computing infrastructure and scheduler. - 3
Foundation for biomedical research
Provides the computational backbone for secure, data-intensive biomedical research, enabling drug discovery, genomics, biomedical imaging, large-scale clinical analytics, and emerging AI-driven scientific workflows. - 4
Continuous operations and modernization
Provides ongoing engineering, operations, and lifecycle management through infrastructure automation, cybersecurity, performance optimization, capacity planning, software integration, and hybrid cloud enablement via the NIH STRIDES program.
KEY INITIATIVES
Powering advanced biomedical research
NCATS' Scientific Computing Infrastructure enables a broad range of data-intensive research programs that depend on unified, secure, and high-performance computational capabilities.
COMPUTATIONAL DRUG DISCOVERY. Accelerated therapeutic research
Supports molecular modeling, virtual screening, protein structure prediction, and simulation-driven analysis to accelerate target identification and therapeutic development.
AI-ENABLED LIFE SCIENCES. Advanced biomedical intelligence
Provides GPU-accelerated environments for machine learning, generative AI, large language models, and multimodal analysis across complex biomedical datasets.
SECURE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH. National-scale scientific computing
Enables secure, data-intensive collaboration across research institutions and federal partners, including NCATS participation in the NAIRR Secure Pilot.
THE RESULT
Researchers focus on discovery. We manage the platform.
By delivering a reliable Research Cyberinfrastructure as a managed service, spinTwo enables scientists and engineers to spend their time advancing research instead of provisioning infrastructure, troubleshooting systems, or managing computational resources. The environment continuously evolves to support new scientific requirements while maintaining operational stability, security, and performance — providing a long-term foundation for computational research across NCATS.
The platform enables researchers to accelerate scientific discovery, reduce time-to-insight, and efficiently execute increasingly complex computational workflows while preserving security, governance, and operational excellence.
Operational Excellence
Reliable, production-grade services supporting continuous scientific research.
Future-Ready
Modern platform that evolves with emerging scientific and AI requirements.
Research-Centric
Infrastructure engineered around researcher productivity and scientific outcomes.
Trusted — Secure
Resilient operations aligned with federal research environments.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
Integrated Technology Stack
Core technologies supporting the NCATS Scientific Computing Infrastructure.
Compute and data
- HPC clusters
- GPU-accelerated systems
- Enterprise storage
- High-speed networking
Access and orchestration
- Slurm
- Kubernetes
- Open OnDemand
- JupyterLab
- Containerized environments
Scientific and AI workloads
- Machine learning and deep learning
- Generative AI, LLMs, and RAG
- Bioinformatics and genomics
- Cheminformatics
- Biomedical imaging
- Computational drug discovery
Operations and governance
- DevSecOps
- Infrastructure automation
- Cybersecurity
- Hybrid cloud through NIH STRIDES
- Lifecycle and capacity management
Scientific domains supported
Translational science, computational drug discovery, genomics, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, biomedical imaging, advanced analytics, and AI-enabled research.