Hurricane Isabel and JLab: The Jefferson Lab survived Hurricane Isabel's mid-September onslaught with no major structural damage. However, widespread loss of electricity and the extended power outage in the area resulted in the shutdown of Jefferson Lab's Central Helium Liquefier - the refrigeration plant needed to run Jefferson Lab's superconducting accelerator. See more news.
SURA/JLab Graduate Fellowship Program: SURA is now accepting applications for the SURA/JLab Graduate Fellowship Program. Since its inception in 1989, SURA has awarded a total of ninety-eight fellowships under this program. Eight awards are planned for the next period to doctoral program graduate students at SURA member universities for research at the Jefferson Lab. A SURA Board subcommittee will make awards based on competitive evaluation of the applicant's academic qualifications, references, plan of study, research potential and relevance to the Jefferson Lab research programs. SURA contact: Hugh Loweth.
SURA/JLab Sabbatical/Research Leave Support Program: SURA is now accepting applications for the SURA/JLab Sabbatical/Research Leave Support Program. SURA offers a program to support living expenses of faculty from SURA member universities on sabbatical or research leave at the Jefferson Lab. This program provides $1,000 per
month for a maximum of twelve months for up to two faculty members annually who must relocate to the vicinity of the Lab for their sabbatical or research leave. A SURA Board subcommittee will make awards based on competitive evaluation of the applicant's proposed plan of research, its merit, and quality and relevance to the Jefferson Lab programs. SURA contact: Hugh Loweth.
Information Technology
AT&T partnership/networking infrastructure: SURA continues to work towards finalization of a cooperative agreement with AT&T that will provide SURA with no-cost access to AT&T's NexGen dark fiber infrastructure. Concurrently, SURA is working with interested members of the IT community and Geographic Network to identify how this collaboration will provide wave-based services in support of regional network infrastructure initiatives. Detailed analysis is underway to examine options for creating wave-based services along the Atlanta-Jacksonville, Jacksonville-New Orleans, and New Orleans-Houston routes. SURA contact: Gary Crane.
PACS NMI Workshop: Seventeen participants representing twelve instituions attended the second of two SURA PACS NMI workshops on Enterprise Directories and Directory-Enabled Applications on September 23 & 24. The participants included "deployment-ready" members of the AN-MSI (Advanced Networking Project for Minority-Serving Institutions) project and the CIC (Council of Independent Colleges). Feedback from both workshops will enable the workshop development team to plan future training based on this successful initial offering. The workshop development team is led by SURA and includes content experts from Georgia State University, the University of Florida, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, the University of Alabama in Huntsville and NMI-EDIT. This workshop completes the training project as funded under the NCSA PACS program for the current year. SURA contact: Mary Fran Yafchak.
NMI Release 3. The NMI Integration Testbed completed evaluation of NMI Release 3, collectively producing 57 reports that provide feedback directly into the NMI development cycle. This release continued a trend towards more practical critique born of deeper project integration. Sites are making substantial progress in leveraging their middleware experiences to catalyze advanced infrastructure deployment for their campuses (enterprise directory services, campus grids) and also to expand remote access to resources for both existing and emerging research projects. SURA contact: Mary Fran Yafchak.
NMI intra-testbed grid. The NMI testbed sites are sharpening their focus on the requirements to deploy truly inter-institutional grids capable of supporting a wide variety of projects within and between organizations. As part of SURA's final year of its NMI cooperative agreement, this intra-testbed grid project initally will enable researchers and educators to showcase the reality and potential of grids for next generation collaboration. Art Vandenberg, Director of Advanced Network Services, Georgia State University, is spearheading this project and has begun cataloging NMI Testbed sites' applications that currently or could, in the future, benefit from the grid. The intra-testbed grid will also enable critical examination of issues that need to be resolved for scalable cross-campus grid authentication and authorization. Marty Humphrey and Jim Jokl, University of Virginia, will lead this effort, expanding on the use of NMI components that leverage campus enterprise credentials. SURA contact: Mary Fran Yafchak.
Tech Transfer and Commercialization
COVITS: Senior executives from business, government and academia met September 21-23 in Roanoke, Virginia, at the Commonwealth of Virginia Information Technology Summit (COVITS 2003) to discuss technology issues and solutions and propose solutions to critical technology issues. Major telecommunications and IT firms joined Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Virginia Secretary of Technology George Newstrom, and Virginia Tech President Charles Steger, to explore the challenges of merging disparate systems and organizations into a single, highly responsive and secure enterprise IT environment. SURA and JLab representatives presented the latest developments in IT and advanced computing at a joint booth on the technology showcase floor. Featured speakers included former British Prime Minister John Major and Ret. General Norman Schwarzkopf. (Photo: Keynote speaker, Former British Prime Minister John Major (center), with SURA CFO/Corporate Treasurer Peter Bjonerud (left) and SURA Director of Business Development Matt Thomas) SURA contact: Matt Thomas.
Development Committee and homeland security: The Development Committee, which identifies the next large-scale collaborative initiatives for SURA, is exploring the opportunities for a project in Homeland Security. Possibilities include a workshop in conjunction with SURA's Coastal research programs, namely SCOOP, to identify areas of overlap between SCOOP and Homeland Security. Any researcher interested in more information about collaborative efforts in this area may contact Development Committee Interim Chair Jim Siedow, Duke University. SURA contact: Matt Thomas.
Southeastern Technology Expo: SURA will be a Founding Sponsor of the Southeastern Tech Expo, with partners RTI (Research Triangle Institute) and TKHR (an Atlanta-based IP law firm). This expo will be a forum for regional universities and national laboratories to participate in a series of technology expositions to showcase leading technologies and research efforts within defined technology areas, with the objective of securing corporate partnerships and funding for licensing and commercialization of new technologies. Tentatively entitled New Frontiers in Biotechnology: Emerging Therapeutics and Technologies in Infectious Disease and Oncology, the initial expo will feature technologies and discoveries from research institutions that are nearing readiness for commercialization in their fields. The expo is tentatively planned for May 11-13, 2004 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. SURA contact: Matt Thomas.
Executive, Management, Administrative
New SURA members: The SURA Council of Presidents voted into SURA membership Baylor University and Oklahoma State University. Baylor University (President Robert Sloan, Jr.) becomes the fifth SURA member from Texas, in addition to the University of Houston, Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Texas A&M. Oklahoma State University (President and CEO David Schmidly) is the second SURA member from the state of Oklahoma, in addition to the University of Oklahoma. With these two new members, SURA becomes a 62-member university consortium with a geographic footprint covering 16 southern states and the District of Columbia. The presidents from these two new member universities will be appointing their institutional trustees to the SURA Board. SURA contact: Elizabeth Lawson.
Board appointment - Florida State University: SURA welcomes to the Board Lawrence Dennis, Professor of Physics, who has been appointed by President T.K. Wetherell as the institutional representative from FSU to complete the unexpired term of Don Robson who has retired. SURA contact: Elizabeth Lawson.
Fall Board meeting: The Fall meeting of the SURA Board of Trustees will be held at Louisiana State University, hosted by Council Chair and LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert on November 11&12, 2003. The Lod and Carole Cook Conference Center & Hotel will be the conference site for this meeting. SURA contact: Elizabeth Lawson.
