The Ecosytem for Research Networking (ERN) is a consortium of academic institutions, research facilities, core service providers, network providers, and industry partners, both public and private, from across the US with a vision to simplify, support, catalyze, and foster multi-campus collaborations and partnerships between academic institutions of all types and sizes that advance the frontiers of research, pedagogy, and innovation. The mission of the ERN is to achieve this vision by providing standards, blueprints, policies, and training associated with the design and implementation of an infrastructure to access data and research instruments, a distributed federated environment designed to simplify, support, catalyze and foster collaborative science, scholarship, and education. To realize our mission and vision, ERN will enable collaborations for democratization of access to research instruments, technical expertise, infrastructure, services, and resources to lower barriers to participation for scientists engaged in collaborative research across institutional and disciplinary boundaries.