University of Washington · eScience Institute

Commercial Cloud Access
Through CloudBank

For AI-centered research

Why cloud?

The work you're doing this week may benefit from cloud computing tools! With cloud you can:

Move compute to large training datasets — no more downloading terabytes to a laptop
Temporarily deploy GPU instances for intensive training tasks
Run multiple parallel fine-tuning runs or reinforcement learning experiments simultaneously
Share reproducible environments so that collaborators can work in the same setup
Host collaborative infrastructure such as API gateways and live model endpoints

The friction

Things We Have Heard From Researchers Over The Years

My training run works on my laptop but takes 40 hours. How do I move it to something faster without rewriting everything?

Setting up my first experiment in the cloud took forever, and it was different for every platform I tried.

I got a $12K bill last month and I still don't understand why.

What CloudBank is

NSF's managed gateway to commercial cloud for research

Since 2019

NSF-funded cloud access entity, co-led by UC San Diego (SDSC), UC Berkeley, and UW eScience

Cloud providers

Managed access to AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, plus onboarding, training, billing support, and a shared portal

CloudBank 2.0

$20M NSF award in 2025 — five-year horizon, ~500 projects/year, expanded eligibility to any U.S. researcher or educator at academic, non-profit research, or educational institutions

NAIRR interface

CloudBank is the interface for private-sector cloud contributions to the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot

Getting access

Access cloud resources through CloudBank — two funding routes

CloudBank Portal

Same onboarding, support team, and billing help.

NAIRR Pilot

AI research, or research that uses AI

Free cloud credits on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Pre-trained models, AI-ready datasets, and sandboxes
12-month projects · results must be open and publishable

nairrpilot.org

ACCESS

Broader computational research, or work spanning multiple resource types

ACCESS Credits exchangeable for CloudBank cloud dollars or national High-Performance Computing time
Covers a wide range of research computing needs beyond AI

allocations.access-ci.org

How Much Funding Is Available?

Tier Range Best for

Explore up to $10K Pilots, first-time users, coursework

Discover $10K–$37.5K Modest projects, gateway development

Accelerate $37.5K–$75K Larger programs, 3-page justification

Maximize Semi-annual review Large-scale, longer-horizon projects

Credits are issued in two halves. The second arrives after you submit a progress report.
Explore and Discover are good entry points — larger tiers are available as projects mature.
NAIRR allocations are direct resource awards, not credits, and can be much larger for AI work. Grand-challenge Azure partnerships reach up to $3.5M.

How to apply

Application Process: less than 1 week from application to account

From UW Earth & Space Sciences

Example: Automated earthquake detection at cloud scale

The project

Marine Denolle and other researchers built a cloud pipeline for automated earthquake detection, combining template matching and PhaseNet, a deep neural network for seismic phase picking

The cloud pattern

Azure Container Instances for compute · Azure Files for data · Azure Batch to parallelize across a VM pool — one day of data per VM, overnight

Why cloud was necessary

On-demand access to machines that "exceed the capabilities of our lab servers, which can get crowded at times"

Connection to this week

Container Instances + Batch is the same cloud-agnostic pattern the SkyPilot tutorial will teach.

Seismic waveform visualization from the earthquake detection pipeline

Learning & support

You don't have to figure out cloud billing and infrastructure alone

Monthly Cloud Clinics

Topical sessions with recorded talk and live Q&A, posted to YouTube. Pick a topic, watch it when it's relevant.

Drop-In Office Hours

Monthly via Zoom since December 2024. Bring a draft proposal, a billing question, or just "I'm not sure where to start."

CloudBank Catalog

At-a-glance comparison of tools and services across all five providers. Revisited every 6 months.

CloudBank Classroom

Managed JupyterHub for teaching. If you're running a course or workshop, no infrastructure setup required.

Community Forum · Glossary · Success Stories

Plain-language definitions, curated examples, and a place to ask questions that don't fit in office hours.

Direct help

help@cloudbank.org

University of Washington · eScience Institute

Resources and Contacts

Help desk

help@cloudbank.org

Cloud credits

cloudbank.org

AI research credits

nairrpilot.org

HPC & cloud allocations

allocations.access-ci.org

cloudbank.org

nairrpilot.org

Commercial Cloud AccessThrough CloudBank

Commercial Cloud Access
Through CloudBank