Indiana University's Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research announced Feb. 8 that Von Welch, an internationally recognized cybersecurity expert, has been named the center's deputy director. Welch, the founder and owner of Von Welch Consulting LLC and the founding co-director of the Cybersecurity Directorate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, is considered a pioneer in the deployment of security for computational grids. A Bloomington native, Welch has maintained a relationship with IU and its Pervasive Technology Institute for a number of years. Full Story

The release of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) report on health information technology is just the latest in a series of calls for sweeping changes to the nation's most extensive federal health privacy law, according to two directors of Indiana University's Center for Law, Ethics, and Applied Research in Health Information. Issued late last year, the PCAST report -- drafted by health care professionals, IT experts and privacy groups -- provides detailed suggestions that would allow more efficient use of information technology to improve health care quality and reduce health care costs. Full Story

A mathematician in the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences is being credited with resolving a 65-year-old problem in combinatorial geometry that sought to determine the minimum number of distinct distances between any finite set of points in a plane. The research has applications in areas as diverse as drug development, robot motion planning and computer graphics. The work by IU Department of Mathematics Professor Nets Hawk Katz, with Larry Guth of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., achieved what many thought was unachievable: Solving Paul Erdös' 1946 Distinct Distances Problem. Full Story

A new new Business/SPEA Information Commons facility complete with interactive technology opened Feb. 7 at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs as a result of a partnership between five Indiana University entities. The newly remodeled area, which offers flexible study environments, was made possible through a partnership between the IU Libraries, Kelley School of Business, School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO, and Residential Programs and Services. Full Story

Dr. Martin Chieng Were, a Regenstrief Institute investigator and assistant professor of medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, has received a $420,000 award from the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation®. The grant supports Were's patient safety research which focuses on using health information technology to improve post-hospital management of patients whose medical test results are still pending when a patient is discharged from the hospital. Poor communication and management of such patients can lead to serious medical errors in post-hospitalization medical treatment. Full Story

The Feb. 7, 2011, edition of IT Matters @ IU includes the announcement of a new, free Indiana University mobile application for Android handsets that is now available via the Android marketplace. Also in this edition is a report on how a Facebook security vulnerability was discovered by a pair of doctoral students at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing, an announcement that faculty at the School of Informatics at IUPUI were recipients of a $50,000 Google Research Award, and a report on newly awarded fellowship grants from the Data to Insight Center, part of the Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) and the IU Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH), supporting the coupling of technology with arts and humanities research and creative activity. Full Story