Published: February 12, 2026
The FABRIC team is excited to announce the FABRIC Ambassador Program, designed to bring FABRIC research infrastructure’s transformative potential directly to campuses and research communities across the nation. This program recognizes and empowers leaders championing FABRIC, helping broaden its reach and impact.
FABRIC is a national research platform designed to advance experimentation and innovation in networked systems. By connecting campuses, researchers, and communities, FABRIC enables new scientific discoveries and empowers leaders to drive meaningful impact in their fields.
Why the Ambassador Program Was Created
The FABRIC Ambassador Program builds on successful models likeXSEDE campus champions and NSF-funded CI Facilitators (ACI-REF, now CARCC). Ambassadors are not always researchers themselves; they may be technology facilitators, supercomputing center leaders, or domain influencers who possess deep knowledge of FABRIC’s resources and can provide training, guidance, and support to new users on their campuses.
Ambassadors serve as a local voice for FABRIC, helping communicate:
- What FABRIC is and how it can be leveraged.
- Potential use cases tailored to campus activities.
- How to make FABRIC resources accessible and inviting for new users.
The Role of a FABRIC Ambassador
FABRIC Ambassadors are leaders in their communities who:
- Identify and connect potential users with FABRIC resources.
- Facilitate FABRIC adoption in research projects, making proposals and collaborations possible.
- Represent FABRIC at national meetings and in small working groups, sharing insights and experiences.
- Act as trusted advocates, helping other researchers see FABRIC’s value and impact in their work.
Becoming an Ambassador
Ambassadors bring transformative opportunities to their communities, enabling groundbreaking research and positioning themselves as leaders and innovation drivers. They also gain access to:
- Ambassador-only events and networking opportunities.
- Priority consideration for travel grants and professional development support.
Ambassadors are chosen based on a rubric that considers their active FABRIC use, leadership in their research domain, and influence within their communities. Ambassadors are expected to confidently engage others, share knowledge, and actively grow the FABRIC user base.
To be considered as the next FABRIC ambassador, complete this interest form.
Early Ambassador Program Success
FABRIC has already welcomed two Ambassadors to the program.
Dr. Nik Sultana has joined the FABRIC Ambassadors program as its first Ambassador, bringing expertise in distributed systems, networking, and security from his role as Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Illinois Institute of Technology. An active FABRIC user for both research and education, Nik leads projects such as Patchwork, a FABRIC-native network profiling system accepted at IMC 2025, and CREASE, which develops testbed network observability and debugging tools. He also collaborates with partners, including Fermilab, ESnet, and AMD/Xilinx, on advanced networking and security research. His work leverages FABRIC to prototype user-run services, evaluate in-network processing, and explore secure Science DMZ architectures, and he has integrated the platform extensively into teaching, reaching over a hundred students. As a FABRIC Ambassador, Nik will support evaluating new FABRIC features, promote community engagement, and help researchers and students adopt FABRIC through outreach, workshops, and hands-on learning initiatives.
Dr. Rafael Coelho Lopes de Sá has joined the FABRIC Ambassadors program, bringing deep expertise in experimental particle physics and large-scale distributed computing from his role as Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and as a member of the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN. His work focuses on managing and optimizing the complex, globally distributed data and computing infrastructure required to process the massive data volumes generated by the Large Hadron Collider, including distributed computing operations oversight for the U.S. ATLAS collaboration. Rafael leverages FABRIC as a testbed to prototype next-generation networking, data movement, and orchestration solutions. He also integrates the platform into research and education at UMass Amherst. As an Ambassador, he aims to expand awareness of FABRIC across data-intensive scientific disciplines, promote collaboration between domain scientists and networking researchers, and help accelerate scientific discovery through advanced, programmable research infrastructure.