ACADEMIA

TeraGrid is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott Lathrop as the Director of Education, Outreach and Training. In this position, Lathrop will be coordinating education, outreach and training (EOT) efforts as well as external relations activities among the TeraGrid sites. With this newest addition to the TeraGrid leadership team, the TeraGrid sites are well prepared to engage broader and more diverse communities in learning about, using, and contributing to the resources and opportunities offered through TeraGrid. Charlie Catlett, Director of the Grid Infrastructure Group of the TeraGrid, in announcing this new appointment, said "The TeraGrid resource providers each have outstanding EOT activities, all of them led by all-stars. We have been seeking to not only create a strong TeraGrid EOT initiative but to create programs and capabilities that will strengthen what the national EOT community is trying to do. To achieve this kind of vision takes more than talented players - we needed a strong leader and a seasoned coach. I'm delighted that Scott has agreed to take on that role." Lathrop joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in January 1986 as one of its early staff members. Since then he has served in directing and leading efforts that included user services, education, and training, serving most recently as the Director of Education at NCSA. He served as part of the Leadership Team of the Education, Outreach, and Training program of the Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (EOT-PACI), throughout its seven-year period of funding from NSF. He chaired the SC02 and SC03 Education Program that brought together teams of undergraduate faculty and K-12 teachers to focus on the integration of computational science tools, resources, and methods into their courses. Since retiring from the University of Illinois in January he has been serving on the leadership team for the Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) project, which is focused on continuing the EOT-PACI efforts, while coordinating the outreach efforts of Shodor, a national resource in computational science education. Stephenie A. McLean, Education, Outreach, and Training Program Manager at the Texas Advanced Computing Center at The University of Texas at Austin added that, "The selection of Scott Lathrop as the Director of EOT is a perfect fit to the TeraGrid project. Scott has more than 20 years of experience with EOT and understands the community and how to work with a diverse set of partners. The TeraGrid project is to be commended for committing dedicated resources toward insuring that cyberinfrastructure is made available and accessible to existing and emerging communities of users." "Stephenie has earned national recognition for her work with the Minority Serving Institutions Network that provides a strong foundation for collaborative efforts with TeraGrid," says Lathrop. Through the Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC) project, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) CI-TEAM program as a direct follow-on to the very successful EOT-PACI program, Lathrop serves as a member of the Advancement Team. Greg Moses, Professor of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and one of the two principal investigators on the NSF funded EPIC project shared his enthusiasm for TeraGrid EOT and EPIC working more closely together saying, "I think that the idea of expanding EPIC toward the TeraGrid activities will be greatly enhanced by this new appointment for Scott Lathrop and we look forward to an even brighter collaborative future." According to Lathrop, "With the contributions of many people from around the country, the EPIC team has launched Virtual Institutes on cyberinfrastructure topics of direct interest to diverse communities, has launched the CyberInfo Beat newsletter with timely news about people using cyberinfrastructure, and has engaged many new communities that have not previously been involved in cyberinfrastructure and grid computing." Lathrop adds, "I believe that the TeraGrid and EPIC activities will nicely complement one another and leverage many other local, regional and national efforts to significantly increase the opportunities for the community to benefit from and participate in the application of cyberinfrastructure to research and education. We will be able to expand EPIC's efforts to engage diverse communities to effectively apply grid computing and cyberinfrastructure to meet their needs." Diane A. Baxter, Ph.D., Director of Education at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, said "Scott Lathrop is a team builder and has a thorough understanding of the national EOT landscape. In the EOT community, he has earned a reputation as someone to trust and to look to for leadership." Lathrop said, "We have spent the last 20 years building a vibrant, collaborative network of talented, skilled, and passionate individuals across the nation. This collegial network places us in a unique position to welcome and engage students, educators, and researchers from all disciplines and at all levels of learning, as members of the TeraGrid community and contributors to making cyberinfrastructure effective and appropriate to meeting their needs." Lathrop has been working with the Shodor Education Foundation, an EPIC partner, on national outreach projects including the National Computational Science Institute (NCSI) and the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD), a Pathway portal of the National Science Digital Library. These projects provide extensive professional development opportunities and quality reviewed resources for K12 schools, colleges, and universities. Bob Panoff, President and Executive Director of Shodor, says "We look forward to serving the national community by continuing to have Shodor work closely with Scott in his new position with TeraGrid. Our combined strengths will be a strong partnership of the content and method of computational science with the high-performance cyberinfrastructure of TeraGrid." "TeraGrid is well positioned to leverage strong collaborations with EPIC partners such as Shodor as we engage educators, scientists and students," says Lathrop. TeraGrid is an open scientific discovery infrastructure combining leadership class resources at eight partner sites to create an integrated, persistent computational resource. Deployment of TeraGrid was completed in September 2004. The system provides scientists nationwide with over 40 teraflops of computing power and nearly two petabytes of rotating storage, and specialized data analysis and visualization resources, interconnected at 10-30 gigabits/second via a dedicated national network. Sponsored by NSF the TeraGrid is a partnership of researchers, computational experts, and resource providers that together provide a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure to enable discovery in science and engineering. TeraGrid and its education and mentoring programs connect and broaden scientific communities. NSF established the TeraGrid resources and their integration as part of a Major Research Equipment construction project from 2001 to 2004. In August 2005, NSF extended its support for the TeraGrid a set of awards for operation, user support and enhancement of the TeraGrid facility over the next five years. Eight resource provider partners were funded along with an award to the University of Chicago to coordinate and integrate TeraGrid via the Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG). The resource providers include Argonne National Laboratory, Indiana University, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Purdue University, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. For more information about TeraGrid see www.teragrid.org.