History and Funding of the CNSF
The Computer Network Support Facility (CNSF) was established by the Pacific Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) in 1992 using federal grant money from the Research Centers in Minority Institutions (RCMI) Program. At that time, the RCMI Program was an initiative of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) at the National Institutes for Health (NIH). Funding for the CNSF during its first eighteen years of existence came primarily from the RCMI Program. In partnership with the federal support, PBRC contributes an administrative home, fiscal office support, space and partial salary for the Facility director and an IT support specialist.
As with other core facilities in PBRC, the purpose of establishing the CNSF was to provide services and infrastructure that would promote biomedical and biosciences research at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. CNSF services have always been designed to supplement and extend services available from the University's Information Technology Services (UH ITS) as well as services provided by school or departmental computer support operations such as the Office of Information Technology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM IT). When delivering services in support of research, the CNSF operates in the context of the excellent network and computer support infrastructure provided by the University. The CNSF often acts as a liaison between researchers and UH ITS or JABSOM IT and we are proud of the cooperative relationships we've built with the staff members of these operations over the years.
Originally the CNSF provided local support within the PBRC building for researchers in the Bekesy Laboratory of Neurobiology and the PBRC administration and fiscal staff. The mandate of RCMI funding was that the director and only staff member, Dr. Brad Jones, would extend services to other PBRC and RCMI staff and researchers in several additional on-campus buildings and at remote locations such as Leahi Hospital, Queen's Medical Center and Kewalo Marine Laboratory.
Over the years, the service area of the CNSF has grown to include all researchers and staff affiliated with the current and former RCMI grants, other NIH center grants such as SNRP and COBRE and many other non-PBRC researchers. RCMI funding enabled the staff to be gradually expanded over the years with the addition of a desktop computer support specialist in 2002 and two half-time support positions in 2008. Eventually the two half-time positions were combined into a single full-time position.
CNSF support from RCMI ended in 2011. We have since expanded our support portfolio to include other NIH center grants. These include INBRE, RMATRIX, Ola HAWAIIand PIKO at JABSOM and two COBRE grants at PBRC. We also provide computer support for the Department of Public Health Studies in the Thompson School of Social Work and Public Health and we provide a poster printing service through a UH Special Fund Research Recharge Center.
