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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News -
General:
UNC, Others Team To Form Institute
For Renaissance Computing
Daniel Reed, an expert in high-performance computing and the key architect
of
many national computing initiatives, has been named the first Kenan Eminent
Professor at the University of North Carolina.
Reed will direct a new interdisciplinary computing institute based at UNC,
with strong collaborative ties to Duke and North Carolina State universities.
The venture, known as the Institute for Renaissance Computing, is supported by
the three universities and will explore the interactions of computing
technology with the sciences, arts and humanities.
The UNC Board of Trustees recently approved the appointment of Reed, who
begins work this month. He will teach and conduct research in the department
of computer science, while also holding faculty appointments at Duke and N.C.
State.
"The opportunity to teach at Chapel Hill, and to build an internationally
recognized, broadly based research institute, made this an irresistible
opportunity," Reed said. "Because many recent biological discoveries are
computer-aided, one of my interests is marshaling the computing talent in the
Research Triangle to enrich computing collaborations with the area's great
biomedical talent. The biological revolution has just begun, and I am excited
about the future of bioinformatics and its impact on health and medical
care."
The institute also will partner with business leaders to enhance the
competitiveness of industries in the Research Triangle and the rest of North
Carolina. A "Renaissance team" approach will bring scientists, engineers,
artists and institute staff together to explore interdisciplinary approaches
to scholarship, discovery and education.
"Beyond biology, we want to unlock computing's true power to enrich and
drive
discovery across the entire range of human activities," Reed said. "The
Research Triangle campuses offer enormous potential for adapting technology to
serve the arts and humanities, to catalyze scientific discovery, to shape
public policy and to enrich the human experience via the novel application of
computing and collaboration technology."
Reed, who served as an assistant professor of computer science at UNC from
1983-84, comes back to Chapel Hill from the University of Illinois, where he
spearheaded more than $100 million in construction to create a new information
technology quadrangle. He served as director of the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications, a 400-person research institute with a mission to
develop computing infrastructure in support of scientific research.
Furthermore, Reed is a principal investigator for the National Science
Foundation's TeraGrid project, an effort to build and deploy the world's
largest, most comprehensive computing system for open scientific research.
Reed is also a member of President Bush's IT Advisory Committee and the
Biomedical Informatics Expert Panel for the National Institute of Health's
National Center for Research Resources. He serves on the board of directors of
the Computing Research Association and chairs the policy board for the Dept.
of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.
"Professor Reed epitomizes the high quality of creative scholarship that
the
William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust envisioned when this grant was made to
the university," said Richard Krasno, executive director of the trust that is
providing Reed's professorship. "The trust is proud to be associated with a
scholar of Professor Reed's distinction and congratulates the university on
his appointment."
The $3 million Kenan Eminent Professorship, the largest endowed
professorship
in the university's history, is part of a $27 million commitment to the
Carolina First campaign from the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust. The
trust pledged to create five eminent professorships at UNC and match
contributions from other donors to create five additional eminent
professorships.
Faculty support is a major goal of the $1.8 billion Carolina First
campaign.
The campaign seeks $350 million for endowed professorships, research support,
funds for travel and other means of attracting and retaining outstanding
faculty. The university seeks to create 200 new endowed professorships during
the campaign. To date 109 have been established.
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