CHAMPAIGN, IL -- Homer A. Neal, a high energy physicist at the University of Michigan (UM), will chair the National Computational Science Alliance (Alliance) External Advisory Council (EAC), as the Alliance heads into a new phase in its efforts to create a computational and information infrastructure to advance scientific discovery. Neal, a UM faculty member since 1987 and a member of the Alliance EAC since its inception in 1997, is director of the UM-ATLAS Collaboratory and the Samuel A. Goudsmit professor of physics. ATLAS is one of two major particle detectors that will be installed inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator now under construction at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Neal directs UM's involvement with CERN and the LHC, and is currently conducting high-energy experiments there. He also participates in the DZERO collaboration that in 1995 announced the discovery of the top quark. He is the former UM vice president for research and has been vice president for academic affairs and provost at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and dean for research and graduate development at Indiana University. Neal served on the National Science Board for six years and is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. "Dr. Neal brings a wealth of experience as a physicist and a university administrator, and the Alliance can only benefit from his intellect and his leadership," said Dan Reed, director of the Alliance and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the center that leads the Alliance. "His work in large-scale, high-energy physics experiments is especially relevant as the Alliance moves to support large-scale scientific projects and as NCSA and its partners make more large-scale projects possible through development of the TeraGrid." The Alliance External Advisory Council is comprised of national leaders in science, public policy, telecommunications, and computer science and advises the Alliance on strategies related to government, science, industry, and education. Neal replaces Philip M. Smith, a partner in the science policy consulting firm of McGeary and Smith, as EAC chair. Smith, who has been chair since the Alliance began, will continue as an EAC member through 2002. For more information visit www.ncsa.uiuc.edu