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2006 Media Coverage
- Dr. Russ Miller was Director of CCR during most of this period.
- Dr. Russ Miller co-Founded the New York State/Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics (and Life Sciences) in 2001.
- November 27: An
article appears in the
Buffalo News in which
Dr. Russ Miller
discusses the role of cyberinfrastructure in terms of enabling discovery and
innovation, in particular, by extending the work done by Miller's
Cyberinfrastructure Laboratory
throughout New York State through a grass-roots NYS consortium.
Dr. Miller is founding executive director of this consortium.
- Fall: Dr. Miller accepted a position on the founding Governing Board of a cyberinfrastructure initiative in New York State, also agreeing to serve as its Founding Executive Director.
- June 8: CCR staff show 200 Buffalo Public School students our new visualization room in the Center for Excellence building. The UB Reporter describes the program they participated in in the article "At Center of Excellence, Students Glimpse Their Future".
- June 3: An
article appears in the
Buffalo News that
discusses the hard work necessary to create the Center for Computational
Research, upon which the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics was built
and commends the previous administration for its commitment, vision, and
insight.
- June 2: An
article appears in the
Buffalo News
that mentions that the Center for Computational Research will be on the
first floor of a new bioinformatics building in downtown Buffalo, about
30 minutes away from the main (Amherst) campus, where the majority of
CCRs users are housed, where students, faculty, and parents spend their time
working and on tours when making decisions about their future school/employment,
where the administrative offices of the President and Provost are located,
and so forth. It will, however, be closer to the Roswell Park Cancer Institute
and the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute. This move is the
brainchild of the current administration, as the previous administration
put more than $7M into the construction of CCR's facility on the Amherst
campus, stating clearly, that CCR would never move its core facility, though
it would likely develop satellite offices on several of the other campuses
of the university.
- June 2: As plans and construction progresses to prepare for the move of CCR to new facilities in the Center for Excellence, not all at UB are happy with the relocation. Business First describes some UB faculty concerns in the article "Some north campus faculty bemoan move of computing center"
- June 2: The NYS Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences along with the Roswell Park Institute Center for Genetics and Pharmacology celebrate their grand opening with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Governor of New York State, George Pataki, created the Center of Excellence in January of 2001 "through the University of Buffalo's Center for Computational Research" and felt that it would "create academic and industrial partnerships." In attendance at the opening ceremony in addition to Governor Pataki were U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, Congressman Thomas Reynolds, NYS Senator Dale Volker, Assembly Majority Leader Paul Tokasz, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, University at Buffalo President John Simpson, and many faculty and staff members of Roswell, UB, Hauptman Woodward Institute, and other local companies.
Highlights of these articles include stating that the grand opening represents
an important milestone in Buffalo's transformation from postindustrial, rust-belt city into a major hub for groundbreaking life-sciences research and spin-off biotechnology industry.
Much of the material covered in these articles is highlighted in the
description of the May 11th article below.
This story was covered by the following news services.
- May 29: Business First describes the expectations of the new Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences in the article "Biotech Center Opens New Era"
- May 15: Business First reports on the grand opening of the Center of Excellence in the article "Bioinformatics Center to Officially Open June 2"
- May 11: IBM, State Sen. Dale M. Volker and New York State Assembly Majority Leader Paul A. Tokasz will be honored at the UB Business Partners Day 2006 according to the UB Reporter article "Business Partners Day"
-
May 11: The June 2nd Grand Opening ceremony of the New York State Center for Excellence in Bioinformatics is described in the UB Reporter article "Center of Excellence to Open"
The Center for Computational Research was leveraged to create the New York
State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics, which will have its grand
opening on June 2.
The article states that the major current tenant of the new building
is the Center for Computational Research (CCR), one of the nation's largest
academic supercomputing centers,
capable of performing 22 trillion operations per second. The
article also notes that CCR is being relocated to the Center of Excellence
from the North Campus.
Previous articles note that this is over the strong objections of the faculty
and that the decision was made without faculty input.
The article says that this grand opening represents an important
milestone in Buffalo's transformation from postindustrial, rust-belt city
into a major hub for life-sciences research. The article gives details of
the ceremony, open houses for the public, and so on. CCR will serve as the
key to such events, showcasing its massive computing and visualization systems.
In addition, CCR has prepared a wide variety of videos and media displays for
the public to view during their tour of the predominantly vacant building,
noting that CCR is currently the only significant tenant.
Gov. George Pataki will be among the distinguished speakers at the ribbon
cutting, as will Rep. Thomas Reynolds, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown.
The four-story, 130,000-square-foot building was constructed by New York State at a cost of $52 million.
State funding for the center and its programs to date has totaled $89.4 million.
In addition to $27.75 million in direct federal funding, the Center of Excellence has received $3.5 million in funding from the John R. Oishei Foundation and $1.5 million from the Margaret L. Wendt Foundation. Funding from the private sector has totaled approximately $60 million.
Along with the new HWI building, which opened in May 2005, the Center of Excellence and RPCI's Center for Genetics and Pharmacology constitute the Buffalo Life Sciences Complex on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. New York State funding for construction of the RPCI and Hauptman-Woodward buildings has totaled $70 million.
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April: CCR will
take delivery within the next several months of a 3TF Dell cluster
consisting of 256 Dell Xeon 1425 servers and a 35TB EMC SAN,
including four CLARiiON CX700s and two NS704G Data Movers. CCR will be
decomissioning the following systems in preparation for its move from
Norton Hall to 701 Ellicott Street: the 2000 server Pentium III Dell
Bioinformatics cluster, the IBM Bioinformatics BladeCenter, the Dell
Bioinformatics Blade System, the 3TF Dell Pentium 4 cluster (Joplin),
and the HP SAN. This purchase will help dramatically with CCR's move into
the Center of Excellence in terms of updating several computing systems,
as well as reducing space, electrical consumption, and cooling.
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