SD Mines Team Gets 200,000 Federal Computing Credits
Students and faculty at South Dakota Mines gain access to advanced computing resources for research that could shape the captions and transcripts used by many people.
Updated on Nov. 9, 2026 in Financial Aid
South Dakota Mines assistant professor Nirmalya Thakur received 200,000 ACCESS Credits from a National Science Foundation-funded program. The award gives his research team advanced computing resources to study how different graphics processing units affect automatic speech recognition accuracy.
Why it matters
Students and faculty at South Dakota Mines gain access to computing resources that may not be available at their home institution, supporting research that can shape the tools used for captions and transcripts. The award comes through a national program that opens high-performance computing to researchers across many scientific fields.
Thakur's team received 200,000 ACCESS Credits through a National Science Foundation-funded program. The project was selected through the Explore category of the ACCESS program, which launched in 2022.
The players
National Science Foundation
The federal agency that funds the ACCESS program, which provides computing resources to U.S. researchers.
South Dakota Mines
A public science and engineering university in Rapid City, South Dakota, focused on technical fields.
The details
The ACCESS program allocates computing time on advanced systems to researchers who apply for it, and this project was approved through the Explore category. Thakur's team will use those credits to test whether different graphics processing units change how accurately and consistently automatic speech recognition transcribes speech. The results are intended to identify what influences transcription quality so the technology can be made more dependable.
Timeline
The ACCESS program launched in 2022.
The award was announced in a news report dated November 8, 2026.
Education Landscape
Access to advanced computing has historically been concentrated at large research universities, which makes awards like this one to a smaller public institution notable. Programs such as ACCESS are one way federal funding reaches institutions that may lack that infrastructure at home.
Students interested in computing-intensive research may ask their department whether faculty can connect them with national computing programs like ACCESS. Those exploring research assistantships can ask financial-aid or department offices how such funded positions are paid.
The takeaway
Federal computing grants can open research opportunities at regional public universities that may not have high-performance systems on campus. Students curious about funded research roles can ask their department or the school's financial-aid office what support is available.
Further reading
For more on how funding and support reach students at schools like this one, explore our Financial Aid coverage.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Kotatv.
