Universities partner to showcase Indiana at international supercomputing conference

A unique collaboration between four of Indiana's leading higher education institutions is helping to bolster the state's focus on information technology.

Indiana University, Purdue University, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and the University of Notre Dame have teamed, for the third consecutive year, to demonstrate the growing array of new, advanced information technology applications at the Supercomputing2002 conference to be held November 16-22, in Baltimore, MD. More than 75 faculty members, staff, and graduate students from Indiana will participate in this international event, which provides a vision for the future of high performance computing, advanced networking, and data technologies.

The Research in Indiana consortium (www.research-indiana.org) showcases developments within the state in several areas of advanced information technology, including high performance computing systems and applications, nanotechnology, massive data storage systems, high performance telecommunications, advanced visualization, and e-commerce. More than 5,000 conference attendees will have the opportunity to see some 30 advanced computer applications demonstrated by representatives from the four institutions in a single exhibit showcasing the resources of the state. The technologies featured in Research in Indiana have applications in science, engineering, medicine, the arts, and informatics – as well as the potential to continue the growth in Indiana's information technology economy.

The partners agree that the deepening and extending of relationships between scientists and technologists from the participating institutions has resulted in a number of tangible benefits.

"Collaboration between institutions is essential in today's research world," said Michael A. McRobbie, Indiana University vice president for information technology and CIO. "For example, IU and Purdue now frequently combine the power of their two supercomputers, creating a massive computational resource that enables new, advanced calculations and simulations."

Both McRobbie and James R. Bottum, Purdue's vice president for information technology and CIO, have been active in the supercomputing conference for the past decade. They indicate that the conference provides a preview of technologies that will be in widespread use in the future and note that the collaboration helps to assure the state's institutions remain on the research frontier of IT.

"The potential technological gains for the entire State of Indiana are boundless with this type of cooperation," stated Bottum. "The state's decision to fund I-Light, the optical fiber network linking IU, IUPUI, and Purdue, shows a deep commitment to that research and to information technology."

The Research in Indiana consortium also represents a partnership between Indiana's private and public institutions.

"The Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is proud once again to be affiliated with the Research in Indiana exhibit at the Supercomputing Conference," said Louis Turcotte, vice president for information technology and CIO at Rose-Hulman.

Peter Kogge, McCourtney Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame agreed. "Participating in the Research in Indiana partnership provides an opportunity for the University of Notre Dame computer scientists and engineers to showcase their work at this important conference," he said.

The Supercomputing2002 conference is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture and is the largest international conference on high performance computing and communications. See www.sc-2002.org/ for more information.

Research in Indiana is sponsored in part by the Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University and the Indiana Technology Partnership.

For more information about the collaboration, see: www.research-indiana.org.

About Indiana University
Indiana University is one of the oldest state universities in the Midwest and also one of the largest universities in the United States, with more than 110,000 students, faculty, and staff on eight campuses. IU has a growing national and international reputation in the areas of information technology and advanced networking. IU was named by Time Magazine as 2001 College of the Year among research institutions. For more information about IU, see: www.indiana.edu. IU's information technology news is available at http://it.iu.edu/.

About Purdue University
Purdue University has one of the nation's most impressive resumes in information technology. Purdue is a world leader in producing IT graduates, and it was the first university in the nation to have a Department of Computer Science. Purdue was also a pioneer in supercomputing-the university was one of the first to acquire a supercomputer in the early 1980s. In 2001, Purdue took another leap forward by creating the office of the Vice President for Information Technology. For more information see www.purdue.edu/itap. For information about Purdue's participation in the Research in Indiana consortium, see http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html3month/0211.Bottum.sc2002.html.

About University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame, founded in 1842 by a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, is a national research university located in Notre Dame, Indiana, adjacent to the city of South Bend. The University's four undergraduate colleges, the School of Architecture, the Law School, and the Graduate School enroll 11,311 students. Research and scholarships are supported by the twin pillars of the University library system – with more than 6 million volumes, microfilm editions and print and electronic subscriptions – and an Information Technology program that fosters high-level research computing and the presence of educational technology at all levels. Notre Dame sends more undergraduates to international studies programs than any of the nation's university enjoys one of the nation's highest graduation rates, at 94 percent. For more information, see: www.nd.edu. See http://www.cse.nd.edu/it@nd/ for information about information technology at Notre Dame.

About Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the #1 college or university offering bachelor or master degrees as its top degree in engineering, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is a four-year, private, non-sectarian college of engineering, science, and mathematics located in Terre Haute, Indiana. In 1999, with a $30 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Rose-Hulman Ventures was formed. The grant's primary intention is to aid in the creation of an innovation economy thereby retaining more of Indiana's educated college graduates. For more information, see: www.rose-hulman.edu. Information about Rose-Hulman Ventures can be found at www.rhventures.org.

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