Northwest Knowledge Network Division

The Northwest Knowledge Network (NKN) is a unit within the University of Idaho (UI) Office of Research and Development (ORED) that provides research data managementand computing support for UI researchers and their regional, national, and international collaborators. NKN operates as a partnership between ORED, the UI Information Technology Services Unit, and the UI Library.

Support for research data management, curation, and dynamic access keeps our researchers at the cutting-edge of science and increases and enhances our institution's competitiveness for external research grants. Quality data and metadata developed in research projects and curated by NKN is a valuable, long-term asset for a public land-grant University and provides a foundation and source upon which to develop and build new research and science.

Most competitive grantors now require data and metadata management plans in grant proposals, and require that funded research projects make their data accessible and reusable to the research community and general public in the long term. NKN is structured to provide this type of assistance, helping researchers with the establishment, storage and curation of quality data and metadata, and access to high performance computing, tools, modeling and visualization capabilities. NKN also maintains and cultivates connections to relevant national and international data repositories.

The services provided by NKN support our researchers in meeting the long-term data and metadata storage and access requirements mandated by the federal government. Open data and open science enable discovery and innovation that advance knowledge.