Cloud computing has become a foundational enabler for academic institutions seeking to scale research workloads, modernize curricula, and reduce infrastructure overhead. This session explores how colleges and universities are leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) to address key challenges in higher education — from burst-capable HPC clusters for computational research, to cost-effective storage for growing datasets, to AI/ML platforms that bring cutting-edge tools into the classroom. We will examine practical patterns for deploying research computing environments on AWS, including integration with schedulers like Slurm via AWS Parallel Computing Service, and strategies for managing multi-account environments across departments and research groups. We will also highlight the AWS Open Data program, which provides free access to large-scale public datasets — enabling researchers and students to focus on analysis rather than data acquisition and hosting costs.
