Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, many archeological digs were put on hold, as collaborating researchers from various international universities could not travel to conduct fieldwork as a team. In California, the technological possibilities of the Pacific Research Platform not only enabled researchers at the University of California San Diego and their partners at the University of Haifa (UH) in Israel to go ahead with their expedition but also drastically accelerated data analysis times.

UCSD researchers had planned to fly to Israel to work in person with their UH counterparts on the underwater excavation of a late Stone Age Neolithic village located off northern Israel’s Carmel Coast. But quarantine requirements would have turned a three-week trip into a two-month-long commitment filled with idle time. Instead, UH researchers conducted the fieldwork while UCSD researchers helped process and analyze the findings virtually. [Read the full article at the CENIC | Blog]