GOVERNMENT

Carnegie Mellon University was selected as one of 34 universities worldwide to receive the 2008 HP Innovation Research Award, which is designed to encourage open collaboration with HP labs resulting in mutually beneficial, high-impact research. Greg Ganger, a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Parallel Data Lab (PDL) at Carnegie Mellon, will collaborate with HP Labs central research arm on a research initiative focused on data storage infrastructure issues. Ganger, author of the winning proposal titled, Toward Scalable Self-Storage, will lead the collaboration. HP reviewed more than 450 proposals from 200 universities in 28 countries on a range of topics within the five principal research themes at HP Labs – intelligent infrastructure, sustainability, information explosion, dynamic cloud services and content transformation. A key element of each award will be on-campus support for one graduate student researcher. "This award recognizes the innovative and cutting edge research that Greg Ganger and his entire team are involved with,'' said Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering. "We salute your enthusiasm and passion for finding solutions to tomorrow's storage challenges.'' Ganger said the award will serve to strengthen and deepen the long-standing relationship between HP Lab's scalable storage researchers and Carnegie Mellon's Parallel Data Lab. "We will be collaborating on our common interests in scalable, self-managing storage to tackle key challenges, including performance insulation between tenants sharing a common infrastructure and tenants with different requirements,'' said Ganger. The research also will generate a prototype that can be tested in both commercial and academic venues. Around the world, HP partners with the best and brightest in the industry and academia to drive open innovation and set the agenda for breakthrough technologies that are designed to change the world,'' said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs. "HP Labs selection of Carnegie Mellon's Greg Ganger for a 2008 Innovation Award demonstrates outstanding achievement and will help accelerate HP Labs global research agenda in pursuit of scientific breakthroughs,'' he added. More details about the HP Labs Innovation Research Program and worldwide award recipients are available at its Web site.