IUPUI hosts major national computing workshop
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 24, 2008
INDIANAPOLIS -- Fifty of the nation's information technology (IT) leaders have convened on the IUPUI campus this week to draft a national strategy for coordinating the nation's most advanced IT resources to promote innovation, research productivity, and US global competitiveness.
The meeting, hosted at IUPUI July 22-24, brings together leaders from two key national organizations -- the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computing (CASC) and the EDUCAUSE Committee on Campus Cyberinfrastructure.
A term coined by the National Science Foundation, "cyberinfrastructure" refers to the computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible.
In his opening address, Brad Wheeler, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, encouraged participants to work together to create a strategy that would encourage economic growth for their state constituencies, advance national competitiveness, and do so in a way that optimizes service to each member's local university communities.
The workshop will result in a report recommending steps universities can implement collaboratively to accelerate research. As powerful as any individual university's computing system might be, national competitiveness and important research can often be best supported with a geographically distributed cyberinfrastructure. The workshop recommendations should make doing this much easier for the nation's higher education institutions.
Craig Stewart, IU associate dean for research technologies and CASC chairperson, said, "The computer scientist Alan Kay once wrote that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. We are bringing some of the best computer scientists in the nation together in Indianapolis to do just that." Stewart added, "The presence of this workshop in Indianapolis signifies the growing stature of the city and the state in advanced information technology."
Other attendees include:
Patrick Dreher, director of advanced computing infrastructure and systems, Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and co-chair, EDUCAUSE Campus Cyberinfrastructure Working Group
Guy Almes, director, Academy for Advanced Telecommunications and Learning Technologies, Texas A&M University
Jim Bottum, vice provost and chief information officer, Clemson University
Stan Ahalt, executive director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center and vice-chair of CASC
Vijay Agarwal, director of research computing, Penn State University
To speak with any of the IT leaders, contact Christine Fitzpatrick, 317-278-1818, cfitzpat@iu.edu.
