It doesn’t require a lot of people to extend the reach of an organization. Take RENCI’s efforts at UNC’s Coastal Studies Institute (CSI), for example. Located in Manteo on Roanoke Island along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, CSI’s research focuses on marine and estuarine ecology, coastal processes and coastal sustainability and engineering, and the colorful history of maritime North Carolina.

Springtime in a nature preserve along the Outer Banks.

RENCI’s fingerprints show up on several CSI projects thanks to Kevin Gamiel, who moved from the RENCI home office in Chapel Hill back to the Outer Banks where he grew up to serve as a link between RENCI and CSI. The strategy: Use RENCI cyberinfrastructure and expertise to bolster CSI’s work. In the process of deploying cyber tools and technologies on CSI projects, RENCI learns to improve the tools themselves and the science of cyberinfrastructure takes a step forward.

Without a large investment and thanks to Kevin’s initiative and talents, that model has come to life. Gamiel and other RENCI staff are helping design the technical requirements of CSI’s new campus. The campus will include a social computing room, much like the room at RENCI’s UNC Chapel Hill engagement center that offers a floor-to-ceiling desktop on all four walls to encourage collaboration and intuitive interaction with data. Chances are, people in both rooms will some day talk to each other, share data, video, analysis applications and scientific visualizations, and interact in virtual environments that make physical location irrelevant.

RENCI’s Dodeca 2360 camera system by Immersive Media has seen a lot of action at the coast. The 11-camera, geo-referenced, high-definition video system most recently captured 360-degree video of Cape Hatteras National Seashore and the iconic Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The camera could become a valuable tool in CSI’s effort to capture the history and the culture of the region.

There’s more—such as RENCI’s work to redesign and upgrade an autonomous vertical profiler system used to capture data about estuarine and marine environments.

All the projects broaden RENCI’s touch. Like any effective virtual organization, the physical spaces where we have desks and computers are only base stations—the real RENCI “offices” are on campuses across North Carolina, in research labs, and in coastal and mountain, urban and rural, communities.

You can read more about RENCI collaborations with CSI on the CSI project page of the RENCI website or at the Coastal Studies Institute website.