Purdue News
Purdue News
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April 21, 2004 Purdue professor tapped to lead new NSF cyber-divisionWEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A Purdue University professor will lead a new National Science Foundation division charged with developing a national "enhanced cyberinfrastructure," an advanced information-technology network linking researchers with vast stores of data, supercomputers and other facilities.
Sangtae Kim, the Donald W. Fedderson Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at Purdue, has been named director of NSF's Shared Cyberinfrastructure Division. Kim has taken a leave of absence to fill the two-year post, which is effective immediately. The division, part of NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, will focus on developing the enhanced cyberinfrastructure, which is an information-technology network made up of advanced hardware, software and facilities, as well as the people needed to make the system work. One of its components is an expanding high-speed network called the TeraGrid, a powerful prototype that enables researchers to access a wealth of resources, remotely use the best supercomputers and high-tech facilities nationwide for their experiments, and interact with fellow researchers at other institutions in real time. "Dr. Kim will draw upon his unique combination of leadership experiences in academe and industry to help us meet the cyberinfrastructure needs of the broad science and engineering community," said Peter Freeman, head of the NSF directorate. Purdue and Indiana universities were chosen by NSF in September 2003 to join the TeraGrid. The universities received a $3 million NSF grant to create their portion of the network linkages that will extend the TeraGrid to IU's Bloomington campus, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and Purdue's West Lafayette campus. "This is a very important position that is pivotal to one of our nation's most critical goals – to create an advanced system that will not only speed and improve scientific research but also will be integral to the future economy," said Linda P. B. Katehi, the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering at Purdue. A recently published NSF report, "Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure," estimates the agency would need $1 billion annually to develop a cyberinfrastructure to "radically empower all scientific and engineering research and allied education." Having a coordinated division for cyberinfrastructure will ensure that technologies and methods are standardized so they mesh, Kim said. "Using the analogy of a railroad, you wouldn't want every state having its own railway system with different gauges and equipment," he said. "You want a national system in which all the regional components connect seamlessly. "Coordinating it across all of NSF and ultimately beyond to other federal agencies is a very important goal." Researchers will increasingly be able to remotely use advanced facilities, such as earthquake simulators and large telescopes, without ever leaving their own institutions. "You get on the computer and access it from thousands of miles away." Kim said. "Everything is computer-controlled anyway, so why shouldn't you be able to use facilities without traveling there." The cyberinfrastructure also will enable scientists to monitor networks of miniature sensors for many types of work, including environmental and manufacturing research. Sensors will be placed in the field to provide data about wildlife, water and air quality and the presence of bioterrorism agents. They will be used in manufacturing facilities to monitor plant operations. Kim, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, came to Purdue last November from Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis, where he was the Lilly Research Laboratories' vice president and information officer in research and development. Before that he was vice president for scientific information resources at Pfizer Global Research and Development, a division of Pfizer Inc. He joined Lilly in 2000 from Parke-Davis Pharmaceutical Research. Kim was a faculty member from 1983 to 1997 in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research included work in mathematical and computational methods for "microfluidics." The work involves using powerful computers and mathematical methods to learn how proteins interact with other "microstructures" inside cells and to design electronic devices that may "self-assemble," similar to the growth of structures in living organisms. In self-assembly, devices might eventually be fabricated using techniques based on chemical attractions, rather than the complex and expensive processes now used. While at the University of Wisconsin, Kim led research programs funded by NSF and the Office of Naval Research. His years in the pharmaceutical research environment have helped shape a current research interest: using numerous computers linked together to perform "massively parallel processing" to discover new drugs. He also is developing a new class of radio-frequency identification devices by creating manufacturing processes that operate at the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Writer: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, venere@purdue.edu Sources: Sangtae Kim, (765) 494-5692, kim55@purdue.edu Linda P.B. Katehi, (765) 494-5346, katehi@purdue.edu David L. Hart, NSF Office of Legislative and Public Affairs, (703) 292-7737, dhart@nsf.gov Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu
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