NCSA NEWS

Barbara Fossum: Serving Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the National Computational Science Alliance

She doesn't have business cards yet so she passes out "instant business cards"--bits of paper cut from 8.5x11 sheets listing simply her name, email, and two phone numbers. But Barbara Fossum is no stranger to the University of Illinois community. As the creator and director of the Beckman Institute's Digital Visualization Facility for seven years, her name and face became familiar to many in Champaign-Urbana. If you don't already know her, you could meet her soon. The first Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) Program Coordinator for High Performance Computational Science, Fossum serves as the liaison between CIC institutions and the National Computational Science Alliance. She will be building the high-performance computational science program with an emphasis on facilitating cooperation and collaborations with CIC institutions and Alliance teams.

As the liaison she will travel to member institutions to learn about their facilities, staffing, and programs. One goal is to identify CIC-affiliated staff at each site and who can benefit from Alliance-developed technologies. Because the technology transfer is a two way street, an equally important goal is to make sure that CIC schools are involved in feedback to Alliance teams. As part of her visits she will be identifying alpha and beta testbeds for Alliance prototypes at CIC member institutions.

Fossum has a busy year ahead. She also hopes to attend most Alliance meetings to learn more about the activities of each team and to make the contacts needed to build the CIC HPC program. A ten-percent appointment in NCSA's Education and Outreach Division ensures Fossum's continued collaboration on several on-going projects. She was part of the team that designed and implemented Chickscope in 1996.

At the recent virtual environments training workshop held at NCSA for CIC members, Fossum worked the room and met her collaborators. "I want to bring Alliance and CIC communities together," she said. "As Alliance resources are allocated and the infrastructure is developed, CIC staff need to make their voices heard. I can be a way to do that."

CIC--an affiliation of Big Ten universities plus the University of Chicago--is an academic consortium with programs and activities encompassing most aspects of university activity. CIC is a member of Partners for Advanced Computational Services (PACS) within the Alliance and serves as a gateway to their regional and computational communities. CIC has its headquarters in Champaign, which will serve as Fossum's home base. Fossum can be reached by sending email to b-fossum@uiuc.edu or by calling 217-244-4464.

 

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