Salt Lake City, Utah — June 29, 2026 — The University of Utah, one of the nation’s leading research universities and a top-tier public institution for innovation, discovery, and impact, today announced the launch of the Secure Research Enclave (SRE) through the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research. The governed, cloud-based research environment, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), expands the University’s portfolio of research computing resources and provides an additional option for researchers working with sensitive, regulated, controlled-access, and sponsor-restricted data.
The SRE builds on and complements established capabilities across the University, including the Center for High Performance Computing and the Price College of Engineering Secure Computing Environment. Together, these resources give researchers a broader set of secure computing options and help match projects to the environment best suited to their data, security, compliance, and computing needs.
Through the collaboration of the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research and AWS, the SRE provides secure-by-design cloud infrastructure for projects that require advanced security, compliance documentation, and scalable computing resources. The environment is intended to support research involving clinical and genomic information, protected health information, Controlled Unclassified Information, controlled-access datasets, sponsor-restricted data, AI-enabled analysis, and other research subject to increasing sponsor, collaborator, data-provider and federal expectations for secure data stewardship.
“Research competitiveness increasingly depends on our ability to support complex projects responsibly,” said Erin Rothwell, Senior Vice President for Research at the University of Utah. “The Secure Research Enclave helps our researchers say yes to more ambitious work by providing a clearer institutional pathway for secure, compliant, and data-intensive research.”
The SRE addresses a practical challenge facing faculty and research teams: sponsor, federal, and data-provider requirements can delay or limit projects when appropriate controls, documentation, or computing environments are not readily available. Rather than leaving individual laboratories or projects to solve those requirements independently, the SRE creates a shared route through the University’s Research Security Office.
The Research Security Office helps researchers navigate the growing security expectations tied to sensitive data, external sponsorship, research partnerships and federal research security requirements, including NSPM-33. In addition to helping teams identify appropriate secure computing options, the Office supports requirement interpretation, project planning, data stewardship, security review and realistic budgeting for cloud, storage, computing, security and compliance costs in proposals and contracts. The goal is to help researchers pursue grants, contracts, restricted datasets and collaborations that require strong research security and data stewardship.
“The Secure Research Enclave creates a practical bridge between research ambition and research security,” said Lisa Young, Research Security Officer, University of Utah. “As research becomes more data-intensive, collaborative and technology-enabled, researchers are navigating more complex expectations for sensitive data, external partnerships, AI-enabled analysis and controlled-access datasets. The enclave provides a secure cloud environment and a clearer institutional path for meeting those expectations in ways that support discovery rather than slow it down.”
AWS is will provide cloud services, technical expertise and support for the initiative. The collaboration helps lower the initial cost barrier for researchers who need to move sensitive, regulated, or data-intensive work into a secure environment, while helping teams understand the requirements of secure cloud research so they can plan more effectively for future grants and contracts.
In addition to cloud infrastructure and security capabilities, AWS is supporting approved research computing and AI tools, as well as workshops and training to help researchers and technical teams develop secure, cloud-enabled workflows. This enablement role is intended to help the University build not only a platform, but a repeatable model for supporting complex research responsibly and at scale.
“AWS is proud to support the University of Utah in building a secure, scalable research environment that helps researchers move faster from proposal to publication while meeting the most demanding security and compliance requirements. This collaboration gives the research community at the University of Utah a clearer, more supported path to pursue grants, partnerships, and discoveries that were previously out of reach,” said Kim Majerus, Vice President of Global Education and Local Government at AWS.
The Secure Research Enclave is designed to support a broad range of research needs, including externally sponsored research, regulated data, clinical and genomic research, multi-institutional collaborations, controlled-access datasets and emerging AI-enabled research workflows. By expanding the University’s secure research computing portfolio, the University of Utah reduces friction for researchers, strengthens readiness for complex research opportunities, and supports responsible stewardship of sensitive and regulated research data.
The launch builds on the University’s ongoing work to expand secure research capacity and follows the inaugural Secure Research Days, co-hosted by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research and AWS on May 27–28, 2026. The event brought together faculty, researchers, scientists, and technical professionals to explore secure research workflows, cloud-enabled research, and emerging requirements for data-intensive and regulated research.
About the University of Utah About the University of Utah
The University of Utah is the state’s flagship institution of higher education, with 18 schools and colleges, more than 100 undergraduate majors and graduate programs and an enrollment of more than 36,000 students. It is a member of the Association of American Universities—an invitation-only, prestigious group of 71 leading research institutions. Ranked No. 1 public university in the West by the Wall Street Journal, the U strives to be a model public university in delivering unmatched value in higher education and health care while making social, economic and cultural contributions that improve the quality of life throughout the state, the nation and the world.
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