Foregrounding the Cyberinfrastructure Center as Cyberinfrastructure Steward

A recent uptick in studies of cyberinfrastructure-enabled research projects has advanced our limited understanding of the use, development and management of cyberinfrastructure (CI) resources. Conspicuously absent from most of these studies, though, is any consideration of the key roles played by supercomputer centers, or what we term „CI centers‟, in CI-enabled research networks. This position paper begins to fill this sizable gap by identifying the three major functions served by CI centers and by framing the CI center as a potential steward of CI.