Case Study: Oregon State University achieves real-time, AI-driven plankton analysis to accelerate climate action with Dell Technologies

Oregon State University’s AI-driven research ships help us breathe easier amid climate change

Oregon State University needed to turn massive, high‑resolution plankton imaging captured at sea into timely, actionable science to inform climate decision‑making. To run AI where the data is collected and avoid costly delays, the university deployed Dell Technologies’ Dell AI Factory solutions—equipping research vessels with on‑board data centers including Dell PowerEdge servers with NVIDIA GPUs, Dell PowerScale storage, Dell VxRail and Dell PowerSwitch S Series networking.

Dell Technologies’ edge AI implementation processes raw voyages of roughly 100 TB (growing to about 400 TB during AI analysis) in hours or days rather than the 20–25 person‑years it would have taken previously, thanks to 8K imaging at 30 fps, high‑speed 200Gbps/100Gbps switches, and scalable Dell PowerScale and cyber protection. The result is near‑real‑time insight for targeted research (making $1M, 10‑day voyages more effective), fast, secure sharing with global partners, and an affordable model to scale AI labs across additional vessels.

Oregon State University

Christopher Sullivan

Assistant Director for Biocomputing, Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing