COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT – PROJECT SUMMARY A critical component of the National Resource for Network Biology (NRNB) is a robust community engagement program. As a bioinformatics resource center, we are dedicated to sharing as broadly as possible the new computational approaches and methods being developed in the Technology Research and Development Projects (TR&Ds). As they mature, methods are disseminated to the research community as easy-to-use software tools, leveraging support from our NRNB ecosystem of software and websites, which also includes a suite of popular network biology resources such as Cytoscape and NDEx. Beyond dissemination of bioinformatics technology, our community engagement program includes a portfolio of training opportunities and activities to cultivate collaboration, service, and close relationships with Driving Biomedical Projects (DBPs) and Technology Partners (TPs). Our center’s Community Engagement program has four specific aims. The goal of Aim 1 is to disseminate NRNB technologies and promote their immediate and broad impacts in biomedical research. This work involves building and maintaining these technologies as well as making corresponding websites, databases, manuals, forums, tutorials, and protocols to promote and provide access to them. In Aim 2, we seek to develop an online training platform that is extensible and maintainable in coming years. Training material is made using free, online systems that are easily accessible to both students and trainers and are used as part of our in-person events, such as hands-on workshops. In Aim 3, we seek to foster communities of technology users and developers. This task is done by sustaining a portfolio of collaboration and service projects (CSPs) with bioinformatic methods, tools and infrastructure. In the last aim, Aim 4, we will work to ensure the long-term sustainability of NRNB resources, well beyond the life of the center. Although our center remains committed to its strong support of core infrastructure, we will take every opportunity to migrate emerging methods and tools to sustainable platforms with independent support. As part of this sustainability plan, we will migrate all dissemination, training and outreach efforts to open, community-driven platforms or third-party hosts. Technology Partnerships, such as those with the Terra Cloud and Cancer Genome Collaboratory also provide excellent opportunities to ensure sustainability of NRNB tools via collaboration with third-parties. We will also emphasize sustainability in our training efforts by mentoring other mentors through programs like Google Summer of Code, and by training other trainers to scale with the growing demand for network biology workshops.