This grant provides continued support to a team led by Peter Fox at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to provide computational and data management services to the Deep Carbon Observatory.  Grant funds support the continued operation and development of deepcarbon.net, which is used to manage the project as a whole, coordinate member activities, and disseminate results both within the DCO and with the wider public.  In addition, the RPI team maintains a state-of-the-art computing cluster used to store and analyze data collected by DCO scientists and to run complicated and data-rich model simulations.  Grant funds provide continued support for these activities as well as additional work designed to lay the groundwork for a “deep carbon virtual observatory” that would exist as a continuing legacy after the DCO has completed its decadal research goals. 

Funds from this grant provide two years of continued support to the international secretariat of the Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) as it pursues its 10-year mission to transform our understanding of the sources, forms, and properties of deep Earth carbon and its relation to hydrocarbons and the origins of life.  As the governing body of the DCO, the international secretariat coordinates and oversees the activities of the DCO’s four scientific communities, keeps the larger project on track, sets priorities and standards, helps allocate resources, and aids in project fund raising.  Grant funds provide general support for these activities for the next two years.