This proposal describes the Indiana Pervasive Computing Research (IPCRES) Initiative, a partnership between Indiana University and the Lilly Endowment to develop a world-class research and development capability in Indiana in some of the fundamental technologies that will drive the 21st century information economy, and an initiative focused on developing the growth of the information economy in Indiana.
Growing the new information economy in Indiana will contribute to building the high-wage segment of the workforce most closely connected with information technology that is the fastest growing segment nationally but which is growing very slowly in Indiana. It will also contribute to the retention of highly trained graduates in Indiana who are leaving the State for jobs in this segment of the economy in other states and on the coasts.
This proposal comes at a particularly auspicious time in the development of the information economy in Indiana. Indiana has not in the past been a leader in these fields. However in recent years changes of real substance and quality have begun to occur.
Indiana University has announced the goal of becoming a national leader in absolute terms in the creative use and application of information technology (IT). It has produced a widely praised IT Strategic Plan which is now being vigorously implemented. It has, over the last two years, secured aggressive and path-breaking agreements with some of the country's leading IT companies Microsoft, IBM and Cisco to name just the largest. It has also emerged as a center of international standing in advanced networking, having become the center of Internet2 and the NSF's international advanced networking efforts, and will soon form its first new School in 25 years the School of Informatics based centrally in IT.
The State has also begun to invest significantly in IT and high technology through its support for IU's leadership in Internet2, the establishment of a State GigaPoP and an optical fiber infrastructure, comparable to the nation's best, to support research between the State's leading research campuses. The State's two-year, $50 million 21st Century Research Fund also represents a remarkable commitment by the State to a major expansion of economic development-linked research and development. The State has strongly supported IU's efforts to construct a Communications Technology Complex building at IUPUI as the focus of IU's telecommunications efforts for which it has now provided funding. The State is also providing significant funding to the State universities amounting to 2.75% of their base State budgets annually over two years to build and update their information technology infrastructure.
Purdue remains traditionally strong in engineering and has recently established arguably the world's best multi-disciplinary research center in computer security the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), a center with which IPCRES proposes collaboration. This Center has also received major funding from the Lilly Endowment.
The activities of the Indianapolis and Central Indiana Technology Partnership (now known as the Technology Partnership) initially established through the energetic efforts of the Mayor of Indianapolis, are particularly noteworthy and have generated considerable effort directed towards building high technology endeavors in Indiana. Through these efforts Indiana and Indianapolis have begun to achieve national visibility in high-performance technology.
The private sector is also expressing greater confidence in the State's ability to step up and compete with other regions of the country, indeed the world, as Indiana seeks to attract high-growth jobs. Eli Lilly and Company's decision to invest $1 billion to expand the Lilly Corporate Center and Lilly Technology Center in Indianapolis, adding thousands of scientists, physicians, computer specialists, and technicians to their workforce, represents an unprecedented opportunity for dramatic economic growth. Likewise, Escient LLC, the Internet-based technology leader headquartered in Carmel, has announced expansion plans and will add 500 new information technologists to its organization within the next several years.
All these efforts and activities will help grow the information economy in Indiana. But they are poised at a delicate moment. They need to be built-upon, leveraged, expanded and sustained if the momentum generated so far in the State is to continue to grow. This is a decisive point in time for the leading institutions in Indiana to support these efforts and accelerate the momentum the front-runners are a long way ahead.
This is the context in which Indiana University is submitting a five-year, $30,000,000 proposal to the Lilly Endowment to establish IPCRES.
IPCRES seeks to leverage what is clearly emerging as one of the major macro-phenomena in information technology in the next century pervasive computing. Pervasive computing refers to a ubiquitous "fabric" of intelligent instruments, appliances, information sources and information analysis tools all tied together by high-speed wired and wireless networks, and including personal software service "agents" that constantly search for, gather, and analyze information important to us. Pervasive computing envisages a time when the relentless decrease in the price of microprocessors coupled with the equally relentless increase in their power allows microprocessors to become integrated seamlessly into every aspect of the fabric of our day-to-day lives. This, coupled with advances in mobile, high-performance, and converged networks that link these microprocessors with each other, will lead to a world in which computing, telecommunication, and information are truly pervasive.
Though a future of pervasive computing is widely recognized, there have been few extensive sustained initiatives anywhere in the world to capture and exploit the benefits of this dramatic emerging trend. Through the partnership of Indiana University and the Lilly Endowment, the IPCRES Initiative will be one of the first efforts anywhere to harness this major trend to expand the research capabilities of a State in this area and to harness it to economic development.
The key strategy that will be pursued in this Initiative is to significantly expand the research and development capabilities in Indiana focussed specifically on areas of information technology fundamental to pervasive computing. These areas will be chosen from the following: in the software technologies area information grids and portals, human-computer interaction, smart devices, network agents, and open software; and in advanced telecommunications high performance networking, wireless and mobile computing, telecommunications convergence, security and privacy, and distributed storage.
This will be done by establishing at Indiana University approximately six world-class research laboratories in these areas. These IPCRES Laboratories will be headed by researchers of international standing called Distinguished Scientists who would attract highly talented young staff and graduate students. These laboratories will be of substantial size, well equipped and provided with excellent space. As part of the IPCRES economic development strategy, an important consideration in choosing Distinguished Scientists to head IPCRES Laboratories will be their experience in the commercialization of their research through product development with industry or start-up companies.
The resources provided by this proposal will make a major contribution to providing an outstanding environment that will help attract researchers of this quality to Indiana. Researchers of the caliber required to be a Distinguished Scientist are in great demand. The successful identification and recruitment of appropriate people will in turn determine the final areas in which the IPCRES Laboratories are established. Special attention will be paid to attracting back to Indiana to head and work in these laboratories researchers who are natives of Indiana or graduates of the State's research universities. The possibility of involving Purdue University in some of these laboratories will be actively explored. Discussions have already begun concerning the establishment of one of the Advanced Telecommunications Laboratories in collaboration with Purdue's CERIAS Center.
The IPCRES Laboratories will be geographically located so as to leverage Indiana University's information technology strategy and its academic strengths in this field. IUPUI is being established as the center of IU's extensive telecommunications infrastructure and IU Bloomington (IUB) is the center of IU's computation and information infrastructure. This leverages the strengths of both locations both internal and external to the University. Making IUPUI the center of gravity of IU's telecommunications networks leverages the increasing importance of Indianapolis as a national telecommunications hub and major fiber crossroads; IUPUI is the site of the Network Operation Center (NOC) for Internet2 and of a number of major international research networks. Making IUB the center of gravity of computation and information leverages the fact that most of IU's computationally- and data-intensive software technologies research groups are located at IUB.
About half the IPCRES Laboratories will be established at IUPUI in areas of advanced telecommunications research that underpin pervasive computing. About half will be centered at IUB in the development of computationally- and data-intensive software technologies for pervasive computing.
The IPCRES Laboratories will be central to the IPCRES economic development strategy. IPCRES will establish an Economic Development Office. The Director of this will be Bill Stephan, currently the Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Indianapolis. He has been recently appointed as a Special Assistant to the IU President and an Assistant Vice President in the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO. In conjunction with the Laboratories, which will attract world-class scientists and researchers to Indiana University, the IPCRES Economic Development Office will develop a program that will build on the work of the Laboratories to:
These activities will build on the technology developments and scientific discoveries of IPCRES Laboratories, promoting the creation of new businesses and the renewal of existing ones. They will also build on Indiana University's major involvement in national and international developments in software technologies and telecommunications that will underpin the pervasive computing environment of the future. IU is home to a number of world-class research programs in these areas, is centrally involved in Internet2 and a number of major international research networks, and has strong relationships with a number of leading information technology companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Cisco. All this, when combined with the other strengths and advantages of Indiana University and the State of Indiana, will establish the critical mass of education, research, and business development activities needed for the State to more extensively participate in and benefit from the IT-based economic growth that is taking place across the nation.
The Advanced Research and Technology Institute (ARTI) is an integral partner in IPCRES' effort to support economic development and promote commercialization of information technology. ARTI will partner with the IPCRES economic development staff and the School of Informatics to develop a broad technology transfer assistance program that includes top-flight graduate students from Informatics and a number of other appropriate IU schools and departments. ARTI will also support intern and part-time graduate student programs that transfer new IPCRES research technology to established business partners. ARTI will develop and conduct seminars and training programs for IU researchers and inventors to teach them the skills needed to prepare patent and trademark disclosures. In addition, ARTI will assist in the technology licensing process and help create new high technology business opportunities through the services of a recognized, experienced and highly qualified Technology Transfer Officer. Finally, in order to help move exciting new information technology into the marketplace, an IPCRES Capital Seed Fund will be established to provide early-stage financing for promising technology successfully developed through IPCRES and elsewhere. This fund will be managed by ARTI.
IPCRES will have a strong association with the new School of Informatics and with the many academic departments at IU that are involved in computing systems, network technologies, or information technology and information science more broadly. The School will be integral to the IPCRES Education Program. IPCRES Distinguished Scientists and senior researchers with faculty rank will usually be involved in instruction or supervision in some capacity. This may include normal University courses, seminars and colloquia. In some cases the instruction will take the form of tutorials and supervised internships associated with direct participation by students in the Laboratories' research. IPCRES will also provide graduate fellowships and research assistantships to promising students who are studying in areas related to IPCRES core research areas in pervasive computing.
An element key to the success of IPCRES as a force for economic development in the State of Indiana will be an increase in the number of IU graduates who are trained in information technology. The School of Informatics will help accomplish this goal through the development of new courses and new curricula that emphasize the practical application of information technology across a variety of disciplines and professional settings. Many of these will provide training in areas directly related to pervasive computing. Support from the Lilly Endowment for the IPCRES Initiative will provide resources to design new courses in information technology areas and to offer them on a trial basis as part of the overall curriculum development process. These courses will serve undergraduate and graduate students in the Informatics program, as well as part-time and adult learners in the State who may incorporate these courses into programs of career development or enhancement. IPCRES will also build on opportunities for collaboration with Indiana businesses and industries which may co-sponsor course development or seek to have courses in Informatics made available as part of their own workforce training and development programs.
IPCRES will be an integral part of the academic life of Indiana University, drawing on the strengths of its faculty and students in many disciplines and fields of study. The Initiative will also be a vehicle for bringing new researchers to the State of Indiana, and for building collaborations between research done in the State and research that is carried on in university, government, and corporate laboratories around the world.
Indiana University is presently developing a new initiative that will provide a unified structure for the development of its information activities on both the IUPUI and IUB campuses. IU will be designating Information Precincts on IUPUI and IUB campuses. These areas will have a concentration of information-related organizations and buildings which will be the bases for the core parts of its information technology infrastructure. In both cases the possibility of colocating technology incubator space within these Information Precincts is being investigated.
The organization of IPCRES into two clusters of laboratories one concerned with advanced telecommunications research at IUPUI, and the other concerned with software technologies research and located at IUB is aligned strategically with Indiana University's overall strategy for geographical location of its information activities, which centers IU's telecommunications infrastructure at IUPUI and its computation and information infrastructure at IUB.
IPCRES will be managed through the IPCRES Steering Committee, whose members will be the Indiana University President, the IU Vice President for Information Technology and CIO, the IPCRES Science Director, the Director of Economic Development, the Dean/Director of the School of Informatics, and the President of the Indiana University Advanced Research and Technology Institute (ARTI). The IU President will serve as chair of the IPCRES Steering Committee assisted by the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO. Additional members may be added as needed.
The IPCRES Laboratories will report to the IPCRES Science Director, who will be a researcher of international standing experienced in connecting research in information technology to economic development and growth. The Director of the IPCRES Economic Development Office will be the Initiative's chief representative to business, industry and government.
External advice and guidance will be provided by the Distinguished Research and Economic Development Advisory Board. Members of this Board will be chosen from some of IU's most distinguished alumni and other figures of national standing in IT. Internal advice and input will be provided to IPCRES by a University Board of Advisors comprising senior administrators and eminent faculty.
Table of contents | The Problem for Indiana
Copyright© 1999, The Trustees of Indiana University