Soo A1, Fraser R1, Haddon N1
1AARNet, , Australia
Biography:
Ai-Lin is the Deputy Director, Research and Innovation at AARNet, Australia’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). Having recently joined AARNet, she has previously been part of infrastructure and research teams at Monash and UNSW. At AARNet her focus is engagement with researchers and partner organisations to connect AARNet services to research projects and priorities.
Ryan is the Director, Research and Innovation at AARNet and leads AARNet’s engagement with the research sector. Over the past 25 years, Ryan has worked in a leadership capacity across many parts of the research and infrastructure sectors with a focus on program delivery, innovation and strategy.
Nicole is the Program Manager, Research and Innovation at AARNet. Her remit incorporates everything from project delivery through to supporting strategic and financial planning for the portfolio. Prior to joining AARNet in 2025, Nicole delivered complex programs of work in a variety of sectors including telecommunications, broadcasting, consulting, energy, and government.
Abstract:
Expectations from researchers and institutions around the reliability, security, and connectivity of research data and compute infrastructure continue to grow. At the same time, increasing volumes of research are being classified as sensitive due to geopolitical, privacy, and commercial considerations. The workloads to support the sensitive research require infrastructure capable of securely processing and storing data at scale, and importantly, with multi-institutional collaboration in mind. The Australian Research Data Commons–AARNet partnership is applying a more commercially aligned approach to delivering national research infrastructure to meet these research outcomes and support cross–institutional collaboration.
This presentation will introduce the Secure Region Nectar Node, a new national node that will uplift capabilities for sensitive research requiring secure integrations with advanced computer resources. The Secure Region also provides an opportunity for partnerships with institutions needing to support AI workloads at scale by establishing secure connections to compute intensive environments such as neo-cloud platforms. This presentation will outline the architecture of the platform and examine its role in supporting secure, scalable research infrastructure across the evolving research and commercial landscape.
