Ohio State and Google Partnership

The partnership with Google Public Sector will accelerate research in a range of fields, from biomedical engineering to earth sciences to the humanities, through access to premier AI models, high-powered computing capabilities, and collaboration with Google's DeepMind. This relationship also will equip students with workforce-ready technical skills, modernize university administrative operations and enhance national competitiveness for major grant opportunities. Benefits to Ohio State include:

• An on-campus Google space in the Innovation District at the Energy Advancement and Innovation Center.
• Research collaborations, including access to Google's prestigious DeepMind research group and resources.
• Research ambassador program from Google Public Sector, a first-of-its-kind internship program offering partnerships with Ohio State students.
• New tools to assist students from admission to graduation and beyond, including personalized AI assistants, career pathway tools and unique experiential learning opportunities.

Access will roll out in structured phases managed by the Office of Technology and Digital Innovation (OTDI). Onboarding details and single sign-on (SSO) login instructions will be distributed when they become available.

Google Drive, Colab, Gemini Notebook, Gemini, Sheets, Docs, and Slides are collaborative tools designed to enable research in pursuit of the AI fluency initiative. As such, these services are approved for use with Research Data, Research Health Information, and FERPA data. Regulated data including (but not limited to) PCI, ITAR, CUI, and HIPAA are not approved for use with these services. If you have questions about the sensitivity of data you plan to use with these services, please email datagovernance@osu.edu. Ensuring that only approved data types are uploaded to Google services is the responsibility of the end-user of the service. External sharing of certain data types may be disabled if it is identified by our security platform, but customers are still required to validate all uploaded data is of an approved type. Please see the Google Drive Sharing Security Notifications article (login required) to see the user experience if external sharing is disabled.

Funding follows a tiered model similar to existing enterprise software at Ohio State, such as the Adobe Creative Cloud suite:

• Core Enterprise Access (Free): Standard access to Google Workspace for Education Plus, baseline AI features, Google Enterprise and core productivity tools is centrally covered by the university and distributed at no cost to faculty, staff, and students.
• Extended & Heavy Compute Needs (Reimbursed): High-level resource consumption—such as substantial Google Cloud Platform (GCP) usage, massive dataset processing, or continuous high-performance compute workloads—will require departmental, unit, or grant funding to reimburse utilization costs.

Instructors & Researchers: Gain access to specialized AI models, high-performance cloud pipelines, and advanced research tools not available for standard retail purchase.

Staff: Receive upgraded enterprise tools within Google Workspace to streamline administrative tasks and data processing.

Students: Build fluency with industry-standard AI tools while benefiting from modern, AI-enhanced learning experiences, internship opportunities, and valuable professional connections.

No,  Ohio State maintains a multi-vendor strategy. Users retain access to Microsoft Copilot and other approved AI models like Claude. This partnership expands access to new technology and training. 

The Google Innovation Hub is a dedicated physical and virtual space co-supported by Google and Onix on campus. It provides researchers, staff, and students with hands-on AI prototyping support, specialized training workshops, and collaborative project spaces.

Ohio State is providing a comprehensive suite of enterprise productivity platforms, advanced generative AI tools, cloud infrastructure, and technical implementation services. Here is an overview:

• Google Workspace for Education Plus: The highest-tier productivity and collaboration suite, providing enhanced security controls, expanded administrative capabilities, advanced analytics, and enterprise communication features across campus.
• Generative AI & Advanced Productivity Tools:
  • Gemini Enterprise for Workspace: Embedded generative AI assistance across Docs, Drive, Slides, and Sheets to streamline writing, data analysis, summarization, and workflow automation.
  • NotebookLM: Google’s AI-powered research assistant that helps faculty, researchers and students understand, explore and analyze information from research papers, documents and other sources.
  • Google Co-Scientist: An AI-powered research partner that helps researchers explore scientific questions, generate new hypotheses and develop potential approaches for testing them.
  • Core AI & Academic Tools: Advanced Google AI productivity applications and specialized research environments tailored for academic and institutional workflows.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP) & Vertex AI: Enterprise-grade cloud compute, scalable storage, data analytics, and machine learning infrastructure to build, train, and deploy custom AI models.
• Onix Professional & Operational Services: Custom deployment, legacy system integration, change management, training, ongoing operational support, and co-management of the on-campus Innovation Hub.

Google develops technology products; Onix implements those products and services. Onix specializes in system operations and technical integration. Google selected Onix to manage local operations due to several practical advantages:

• Local Integration: Onix maintains a physical footprint in Ohio, enabling deep integration with Ohio State's technology ecosystem.
• Operational Flexibility: Offers customized billing structures, campus co-support for the on-site Google office, and mechanisms to issue reinvestment checks directly back to university programs.
• Execution Expertise: Blends Google’s research and core product development (AI and cloud infrastructure) with Onix’s hands-on deployment and technical support.

A joint governance committee co-led by Ohio State faculty and staff, Google Higher Education executives, and Onix account leadership will oversee operations, security compliance, and strategic alignment.