Last modified: Friday, October 7, 2011
IU's 'greenest' building, tech headquarters to be dedicated Wednesday
$37 million Cyberinfrastructure Building is new home for more than 600 IT employees
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 7, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- On Wednesday (Oct. 12), Indiana University will formally dedicate its new state-of-the-art Cyberinfrastructure Building (CIB), the latest addition to the growing IU Technology Park East at 10th Street and the Indiana State Road 45/46 Bypass.
President Michael A. McRobbie will preside over the ceremony, which will begin at 3:30 p.m. in the atrium of the new building at 2709 E. 10th St.
IU President Michael McRobbie will preside over dedication and present two medals of distinction: Dennis Gannon will receive the President's Medal of Excellence and Ira Fuchs will receive the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion.
"Information technology is fundamental to every aspect of Indiana University from education to research to administration," McRobbie said. "Increasingly the best universities will be those that utilize IT in the best and most productive ways. This new building is a vital step in ensuring the provision of world-class IT services and facilities at IU in a stable and reliable manner, while at the same time building on the extensive expertise that will now be located in this building to help support and expand IU's fundamental missions of education and research, and also contributing to the foundations of IU's new Technology Park on the Bypass."
The $37 million facility is unlike any other IU building in the state. It features a collaborative, open-space office design, numerous spaces for teleconferencing, three telepresence rooms, 36 "focus booths" for meetings and private discussions and abundant soft and bar-style seating to encourage work throughout the building. The CIB design also represents a significant investment in green infrastructure with its employee bicycle garage, locker rooms with showers and storage, solar panels and grounds landscaped for water capture. The design has achieved gold LEED certification with a possibility to reach platinum certification.
Ground was broken on the 123,000-square-foot building in April 2010, and staff previously located in the Wrubel Computing Complex, Franklin Hall and the Poplars Building began moving into the new building in August. The new facility is adjacent to two other recent IT investments at IU, the $32.7 million IU Data Center that houses more than 1,000 computer servers, and the $10 million IU Innovation Center, which is home to university researchers, start-up companies and IU's Pervasive Technology Institute. Both opened their doors in 2009.
IU Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President Karen Hanson and Bradley C. Wheeler, Indiana University's vice president for information technology and CIO, will join McRobbie in making comments during the ceremony.
"Indiana University has twice been named one of the nation's top 100 places to work in IT and has been an IT leader in higher education for the past 15 years," Wheeler said. "This new, unique, green facility will help IT staff take IU to the next level in its core missions of education and research."
The event will also feature presentation of two university medals of distinction: Dennis Gannon will receive the President's Medal of Excellence and Ira Fuchs the Thomas Hart Benton Mural Medallion.
Gannon is the director of applications for the Cloud Computing Future Group at Microsoft and currently on leave from his post as a professor of computer science at IU. He was the science director for the former Indiana Pervasive Technology Labs and was chair of IU's Department of Computer Science for seven years, during which time he led the team that designed IU's School of Informatics and Computing. The President's Medal recognizes sustained excellence in service, achievement and leadership.
Fuchs is credited with co-founding Because It's Time Network (BITNET) in 1981, the world's first computer messaging network for liberal arts professors. His work played a crucial role in the early development of the Internet and e-mail technology, and he continues to pioneer information technology projects in the academic world. Fuchs is a former vice president for computing and information technology at Princeton University and vice president for research in information technology at the Mellon Foundation. Since 2010 he has been executive director of Next Generation Learning Challenges, which focuses on identifying and scaling technology-enabled approaches to improve college readiness and completion, especially for low-income young adults. The Benton Medallion rewards prominent achievement and dedicated service.
For more information or to speak with university officials, please contact Steve Chaplin, University Communications, at 812-856-1896 or stjchap@iu.edu.
