The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is one of five original centers in the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Centers Program and a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The center was founded when a group of University of Illinois faculty, led by Larry Smarr, sent an unsolicited proposal to the National Science Foundation in 1983. The foundation announced funding for the supercomputer centers in 1985; the first supercomputer at the Center came online in January 1986.