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Data to Insight Center

Pervasive Technology Institute

People

Leadership
	Beth Plale, Director. Professor Beth Plale serves as Director of the Data to Insight Center and the Center for Data and Search Informatics for Pervasive Technology Institute. She is also an associate professor of Computer Science in the School of Informatics and Computing. Plale is a national leader in data and information management and has been part of the leadership team of several major grant funded projects including the 2003-2009 NSF funded large ITR LEAD project in cyberinfrastructure for mesoscale meteorology forecasting. She co-founded Women in Computing @IU (WIC@IU) in 2001. Dr. Plale received a PhD in Computer Science in 1998 and an MBA in 1986. She is a recipient of the prestigious DOE Early Career Award and has authored or co-authored over 95 publications.
	Robert McDonald, Associate Director. Robert is the Associate Dean for Library Technologies at IU and serves as Associate Director for the Data to Insight Center. Prior to coming to IU, McDonald served as Chronopolis Project Manager for the Digital Preservation Initiatives Group at San Diego Supercomputer Center. He also held the position of Associate Director of Libraries, Division of Library Technology and Research at Florida State University. McDonald holds degrees in Music from the University of Georgia, and a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of South Carolina.
	Matthew Link, Associate Director. Matt is Director of Systems for IU's Research Technologies division in addition to serving as an Associate Director for both the Pervasive Technology Institute Digital Science Center and Data to Insight Center. Link has more than fifteen years of experience working in higher education technology, including student technologies, messaging and telecommunication, Unix Systems support, and high performance computing. In his current roles, Link oversees the management of Indiana University's research technologies systems including high performance computing and data storage. Link is an active member of the planning committee for the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SCxy) Conference and has been involved with the conference since 2003. Link also serves as Technical Equipment Lead for the NSF-funded Polar Grid: Cyberinfrastructure for Polar Science project led by Indiana University.
	Eric Wernert, Associate Director. Eric serves as an Associate Director of the Data to Insight Center and is Senior Manager and Scientist for Visualization Technologies and Futures for the Research Technologies Division of IU. Wernert is responsible for providing strategic leadership for the Indiana University system in the area of advanced visualization, including setting university-wide strategy for visualization and strategic management of visualization facilities. Wernert has led visualization initiatives for the IU School of Medicine and has held leadership roles in the visualization components of funded research projects from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. Wernert holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Bellarmine College, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Indiana University.
	Polly Baker, Associate Director. Polly is a distinguished scientist, director of the Visualization and Interactive Spaces Lab, and an Associate Director of the Data to Insight Center. Dr. Baker earned a B.A. in Psychology from Cornell University, an M.S. in Education from Syracuse University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Dr. Baker's research is in exploring the design and application of highly interactive multimedia environments for data visualization and information exploration. Her research combines her academic training in Psychology, Education, and Computer Science. Prior to joining Indiana's Pervasive Technology initiative, Polly spent many years at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, where she worked with scientists to define and develop custom solutions for advanced visualization problems, both for the desktop and virtual reality. Dr. Baker is the author of several widely used texts in computer graphics.


Faculty and Staff
	Mehmet Atkas, Postdoctoral Fellow. Mehmet's research interests span two areas: Systems Science and Data Science. In the former area, his emphasis has been on Distributed Systems, Web-based Systems and Grid Computing. He is particularly interested in Grid/Web Information Systems, Information Integration and Federation in Grid/Web Information Services, Service Oriented Architecture based Distributed Systems for Science and Business Applications, Semantic Grid/Web based Systems, Internet Computing and Geographical Information Systems/Sensor Grids. In the latter area, his emphasis has been on Data/Web Mining and Information Retrieval. He is particularly interested in Machine Learning Techniques to Mine Massive Datasets, Web Search, Personalized Web Search and Conversational Recommendation Systems for Information Retrieval. Philosophy of Doctorate: Computer Science, Indiana University, 2007; Master of Science, Indiana University, 2003; Master of Science, Syracuse University, 2001; Bachelor of Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 1997.
	Gamal El Afandi, Postdoctoral Fellow. Gamal's main field of specialization is climate and climate change. His research activities include utilizing advanced Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model over North Africa to compare its output with reality in addition to studying the impacts of climate change on different sectors. PhD Meterology, University of Cairo, 2005; Graduate PhD Student, Georg-August-Universitat, Gottingen, Institute of Bioclimatology, Germany, 2001-2003; Masters of Science Meteorology, University of Cairo, 2000; Bachelor of Science, Physics, 1989, El Menoufia University, Egypt.
	Scott Jensen, Postdoctoral Fellow. Scott's research focus is on metadata management (with a particular focus on scientific grid environments), data grids, services and SOA, XML, XML-Relational storage, and RDF. His disertation work is focussed on identifying the characteristics of XML-based metadata and differences from general XML storage that can be exploited to provide faster query response for grid portals while using a flexible, scalable, and adaptable generic relational data structure that can be applied to varied scientific domains using different metadata schemas and data hierarchies. PhD Candidate, School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University; MS Computer Science, Depaul University, 1996; MS Accounting,Southern Illinois University, 1986; BS Accounting, Southern Illinois University, 1984. Personal Website
	Stacy Kowalczyk, Postdoctoral Fellow. Stacy's primary research focus is digital libraries. Her interests include digital preservation and repository architectures, system architectures for discovery and delivery systems, digital asset management and the management of digitization projects. PhD Candidate, Indiana University School of Libray and Information Science, 2010; Masters of Library and Information Science, Dominican University, River Forest, IL, 1996; BA, English Literature, Lewis University, Romeoville, IL, 1978. Research.
	David Leake, Professor of Computer Science, IU School of Informatics and Computing. David's interests lie in artifical intelligence and cognitive science, including case-based reasoning, intelligent information systems, intelligent user interfaces, knowledge management, knowledge modeling, multimodal reasoning, multistrategy learning and introspective reasoning. Personal Website.
	Christoper Small, Network and System Engineer, IU Global Research Network Operations Center (GRNOC). Chris is leading the IU enterprise GENI campus trials.
	Felix Terkhorn, Research Technologist. Felix is an IU alum with a Master's in Computer Science. He focuses on web development and systems programming for the Data to Insight center. He recently developed the Vortex2 Field Experiment Viewer, which showcases the high-quality data products generated by LEAD II's participation in the Vortex2 weather challenge during summer 2010. He acts as a technical generalist and works to support various research activities within the Data to Insight center.
	Robert Ping, Project Manager. Robert brings considerable organization and management to the center. He works on Education, Outreach and Training activities for the Data to Insight Center and the TeraGrid. His background includes event planning, production coordination and scheduling. He earned a Bachelor of Science from Indiana University and has owned an internet development company specializing in niche communities use of collaborative technologies for communication and internet sales since 1997.


Research Assistants

	You-Wei Cheah IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing BS Computer Science, BS Mathematics, Indiana University, US 2007	Peng Chen IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing BE Software Engineering, Nanjing University, China, 2010	Jeff Cox IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing


	Devarshi Ghoshal IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing	Chathura Herath IU PhD Candidate School of Informatics and Computing Personal Website	Yuan Luo IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing MS Computer Science, 2008, BS Computer Science, 2005, Jilin University, China Personal Website


	Joey Kendall-Morwick IU PhD Candidate School of Informatics and Computing MS Computer Science and Information Science, BS Mathematics, Ohio State University, 2003 Personal Website	Yiming Sun IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing MS Indiana University, US, 2005; BS Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2001 Personal Website	Eran Chinthaka Withana IU PhD Candidate School of Informatics and Computing MSc Computer Science, Indiana University, US, 2009; BsC Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, 2003 Personal Website


Research Assistants
	Kavitha Chandrasekar IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing					Zong Peng IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing
	Abhijeet Kodgire IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing					Prajakta Purohit IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing
	Shobana Krishnan IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing


PhD Graduates and Former Postdoctoral Fellows

	Bin Cao, Phd Teradata Corp. PhD Computer Science and Engineering, 2006, University of Louisville; MS Computer Science, University of Louisville; BS Computer Engineering, Southeast University, China	Ying Liu, PhD Cisco	Sangmi Lee Pallickara, PhD Colorado State University

	Lavanya Ramakrishnan, PhD Lawrence Berkely National Lab PhD, MS, Computer Science, Indiana University; BS Computer Engineering, VJTI, University of Mumbai Personal Website	Yogesh Simmhan, PhD Microsoft Research Personal Website	Nithya Vijayakumar, PhD Cisco Personal Website


Past Lab Members
	Ashish Bhangale MS Computer Science, 2010, School of Informatics and Computing; Microsoft					Suresh Marru TeraGrid (Indiana University)
	Heejoon Chae Indiana University					Aparna Rao IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing
	Sharanya Chinnusamy MS Computer Science, 2010, School of Informatics and Computing; Microsoft					Kalani Ruwanpathirana BSc (Hons) Engineering in Computer Science, 2008 University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
	Sribabu Doddapaneni MS Computer Science, School of Informatics and Computing					Prashant Sabhnani IU Masters Student School of Informatics and Computing
	Nilesh Mahajan School of Informatics and Computing					Girish Subramanian IU PhD Student School of Informatics and Computing
	Tejas Totade MS Computer Science, 2010, School of Informatics and Computing