Dear Friends of CITRIS,
I am extremely honored to be appointed Acting Director of
CITRIS. As I took this position, I began reading the wonderful book, The Gold and the Blue, by the legendary
educator Clark Kerr, and found that, to me, CITRIS resonates strongly with
Kerr’s ten-campus vision of a fully integrated university with teaching,
research and services to surpass every other in the world. I hope to further
support our inter-campus ties and draw on the unique strength of each CITRIS
campus to further our goal of meeting societal-scale challenges using
information technology.
I would also like to thank and congratulate my good
friend Shankar Sastry, the
outgoing CITRIS director and new dean of the College of Engineering at UC
Berkeley. Shankar has done an excellent job of guiding CITRIS through the
past two years of growth and improvements, and I plan to build upon and expand
his work.
One major accomplishment was establishing
intra-campus “seed funded projects” that will soon grow into new CITRIS centers.
This has had a major impact on our recent growth as a four-campus research
center.
Owing to Shankar’s leadership and help in focusing our
research interests, the five areas in which CITRIS is supporting new multi-disciplinary
IT projects are: healthcare, services, intelligent infrastructure, developing
regions, and energy and the environment. I hope to continue to guide CITRIS
towards supporting such initiatives that will have a big long-term benefit for
both the state and the globe, and I look forward to working with the wonderful
directors and researchers already in place to do so.
Both of the newsletter stories in this issue focus on how
using traditional IT can have a big effect in fields that are not usually
thought of as IT-focused. The first piece is about the Electronic Cultural
Atlas Initiative, which generates interactive cultural maps that assist
humanities scholars in making sense out of their findings and often leads to
new discoveries. The second story discusses the new CITRIS-supported Knowledge
Services and Enterprise Management program at UCSC, which will help traditional
businesses ensure that their knowledge services are used in the most efficient
way possible.
I hope that you enjoy both
articles. We appreciate your support, and keep up the good work.
Professor Paul K. Wright
Acting Director, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of
Society
Paul Wright named the
Acting Director of CITRIS
Paul Wright, the current Chief Scientist at CITRIS, has been
appointed Acting Director of the institute. Prof. Wright is a professor in
Mechanical Engineering and co-director of both the Berkeley Manufacturing
Institute and the Berkeley Wireless Research Center.
http://www.citris-uc.org/Paul-Wright-appointment
Shankar Sastry
appointed Dean of College of Engineering, UC Berkeley
Congratulations to former CITRIS Director Shankar Sastry,
who has been appointed Dean of the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley,
effective July 2007.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/07/19_sastry.shtml
Directors’ gala reception
with COE, Aug. 29
CITRIS and COE at UCB held a Directors’ gala reception on
August 29, 2007 to honor Shankar Sastry as the outgoing Director of CITRIS and
welcome Paul Wright to his new position as Acting Director.
http://www.citris-uc.org/Directors-reception-2007
CITRIS Europe
Research Symposium: London, July 11-12
CITRIS holds an annual research symposium/workshop in Europe
each summer to update and inform our European corporate sponsors on what has
been accomplished over the previous year. Photos and presentations from this
year’s event in London are now online:
http://www.citris-uc.org/CITRIS-in-Europe-2007
CITRIS Research
Exchange schedule for the fall
The fall schedule for the popular CITRIS Research Exchange
series is now out. These talks are held every Wednesday at noon in 290 Hearst
Memorial Mining Building on the UC Berkeley campus, and lunch is provided.
These talks are all free, open to the general public, broadcast live online and
archived on our website. Please see the flyer for a complete list of speakers
and topics at http://www.citris-uc.org/RE-Fall2007
Summer of Service
Institute shares videos and photos
The Summer of Service Technology Institute won the Special
Prize for Best Use of IT for Rural America ($5000) in this year's CITRIS
White Paper competition and has now produced a summary video to share how the
institute went.
http://www.citris-uc.org/SOS-videos-2007
$100 Million Grant
Launches Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation today announced $100
million in founding support to launch the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing
at the University of California, Davis. The new school and its programs will
serve approximately 450 students and will incorporate UC Davis’ expertise in
public health, telemedicine and health technology.