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News http://research.usu.edu/htm/news en-us Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:52:52 MST http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 360 jacoba.mendelkow@usu.edu (Jacoba Mendelkow) Kinkead Given Annual Library Faculty Award http://research.usu.edu/htm/news/articleID=7762 Associate Vice President for Research Joyce Kinkead was given the annual Library Faculty Award in recognition of her donations to the Merrill-Cazier Library. The award was presented to her on Oct. 27. Associate Vice President for Research Joyce Kinkead was given the annual Library Faculty Award in recognition of her donations to the Merrill-Cazier Library. The award was presented to her on Oct. 27.   Kinkead endowed the May Swenson room and designated it as a place for students to study. Swenson is a USU alumna who graduated in the 1930s and has since become a renowned poet throughout the U.S. and the world, Kinkead said. The room displays Swenson’s poems, each coupled with an artifact – one being a Navajo blanket – which represents the topic of the poem.   John Elsweiler, the library’s associate dean of public services, said, “She has definitely been very influential throughout her career with involving undergraduates in the research process.”   The exhibits are designed by students in an English class taught by Paul Crumbley, Kinkead said. The study and exhibit hall has created a research opportunity for students, she said.   “I’ve always integrated library use in my classes,” Kinkead said.   Kinkead not only started an undergraduate research endowment for the library, she has been involved in the English writing program for English 1010 and 2010 classes, Elsweiler said. She has also taken the time to work with English teachers’ assistants in the writing program process. In addition to her role as research vice president, Kinkead teaches upper-division English classes.   Elsweiler said Kinkead has been with the university for more than 20 years.   “In her tenure she has been supportive of the library and the library’s mission,” Elsweiler said.   The library deans take recommendations from the librarians to make the decision of who receives the Library Faculty Award. Elsweiler said this is done because librarians often work in closer proximity to the best candidates for the award. Once the candidates have been selected, the library administration makes a final decision on who will receive the award at the ceremony.   “I was surprised to get it,” Kinkead said.   She said the honor’s corner was named after her and the dedication was initiated by the honor’s program. Accompanying the Library Faculty Award is an award for service the library bestows annually, and the recipient this year is the Utah State Today editor, Patrick Williams.   Kinkead's successes include authoring the books “A Schoolmarm All My Life: Personal Narratives From Frontier Utah,” “Writing Centers in Context” and “Literary Utah: A Bibliographic Guide.” Kinkead has also received an award for “Top Prof” Outstanding Faculty Member, Humanist of the Year and ASUSU Faculty Service. Throughout her career she has encouraged all of her students to invest themselves in meaningful research and utilize the sources the library offers in doing so.   – catherine.meidell@aggiemail.usu.edu   Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 MST http://research.usu.edu/htm/news/articleID=7762 jacoba.mendelkow@usu.edu (Jacoba Mendelkow) USU High Performance Computing Director Accepts New Position at Northwestern University http://research.usu.edu/htm/news/articleID=7637 Thomas Hauser, director of High Performance Computing at Utah State University, ... <table cellspacing="1" cellpadding="1" border="0" align="right" style="width: 229px; height: 404px;"> <tbody> <tr> <td> <img align="right" alt="" style="width: 191px; height: 267px;" src="/admin/images/uploads/image.jpg" /> Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering MS candidate, Kyle Horne, Thomas Hauser, former director of HPC@USU and Nate Benson (standing), director of HPC@USU. </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> Thomas Hauser, director of High Performance Computing at Utah State University, has recently left USU to become associate director of research computing and head of the Research Innovation Center at Northwestern University. Hauser’s new appointment begins Nov. 1. Nate Benson, lead systems administrator at HPC, has been appointed as acting director.   “I have enjoyed my time at USU,” said Hauser. “I enjoyed building a strong HPC infrastructure at USU to support computational engineering and science, and I appreciate the vision and support of Vice President for Research Brent Miller.”   Hauser has been director of HPC@USU since 2005. Over one-hundred USU faculty and students in five colleges have depended on HPC@USU to accomplish their research; there are currently about 70 active users.   Additionally, Hauser was very active promoting the application of HPC in science and engineering in Utah and the U.S. He hosted and organized a conference, “Opportunities for HPC in Agriculture and Life Sciences” in 2007, and co-organized the “Utah Advanced Computing Summer Institute” in 2008. Hauser also lead the formation of the Utah Cyber Infrastructure Consortium. Nationally, he was a member of the organizing committee of the workshop “Developing a Coherent Cyberinfrastructure from Local Campus to National Facilities: Challenges and Strategies” in 2008.   Hauser’s team has been selected as one of four finalists in the prestigious national Supercomputing Conference SC09 Storage Challenge, a competition showcasing real-world effective approaches using computer storage, which is often the main limitation of overall system or application performance.   HPC@USU has attended the international SC conference with student research exhibits since 2005, when HPC@USU was newly founded. Since SC06, HPC@USU has collaborated with the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing to present a unified Utah HPC presence as part of the Utah Cyberinfrastructure consortium that Hauser chaired for the last three years.   “I’ve always felt strongly about including student researchers in our activities,” said Hauser. “Not only have they presented research, but they have also been exposed to cutting-edge HPC technology, industry direction, and technical progress. This exposure helps inform their research at USU, as well as offer incredible networking opportunities for them on a national scale.”   Benson joined HPC@USU in October 2008 as the lead systems administrator and brings with him nearly two decades of experience managing and designing large computer clusters, data centers, and storage area networks. With experience mentoring and managing many IT system administration personnel in business environments, Benson has for the past year designed a lean, but strong, hardware infrastructure of new equipment to expand USU research computing capabilities into the future. “We wish Thomas well in his new position at Northwestern University,” said Brent Miller, vice president for research at USU. “At the same time, we believe we will continue to see many great things from HPC in the coming years under the capable leadership of Nate Benson.”   HPC@USU is a research support center at USU designed to enable research activities and education in all disciplines that depend on advanced computing technologies. It provides large scale computing, visualization and data management resources; enables education of advanced cutting-edge simulation and cyber environments; and creates partnerships to develop and deploy new computing systems to advance education and knowledge. For more information, visit http://www.hpc.usu.edu.   Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 MST http://research.usu.edu/htm/news/articleID=7637