Microsoft Azure Cloud credits available

By | October 2, 2020
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The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) and Information and Technology Services (ITS) have partnered with Microsoft Azure to offer cloud computing credits to U-M faculty members for both research and teaching projects.  

Research. Submit proposals for research projects in any discipline that fit one of the following categories:

  • The research project is new and can take advantage of the Azure cloud computing resource. The project needs to have other necessary resources in place so that they can start as soon as the computing credits are awarded. Credits will not be awarded to projects that are still pending for funding.
  • The project is already ongoing, but the research team has not used Azure computing resources in the past. In this case, the team can apply if the original budget for computing can be re-budgeted for other purposes with the permission from the funding source. 

The award decisions will be based on both the scientific merit and suitability for cloud computing. (Note: These credits will not support the use of data that has to be HIPAA-compliant.)

Teaching. Proposals for teaching projects in any discipline can take advantage of the Azure credits. These include computing resources for undergraduate and graduate level for-credit courses, other short courses, and extracurricular research projects carried out by student clubs/teams with faculty mentoring. The lead teaching faculty or faculty mentors of student teams will need to be the Principal Investigators on the applications and provide the oversight for awarded projects.

Award information: This award is for one year. Each research project can request up to $20,000 worth of credits. Each teaching project can request up to $10,000 worth of credits. The credits can be used for any Azure service. Up to $300,000 worth of credits will be awarded in total.

Who may apply: Principal Investigators (PIs) and co-PIs should be faculty members at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Dearborn, or Flint campus). An individual may participate as PI/co-PI on only one proposal. Co-investigators, consultants and other personnel are not limited by this restriction.

Direct questions to the MIDAS team: midas-research@umich.edu.