On Campus
IBM and A&T Announce Research Collaboration
By Bruce E. Phillips
Jun 5, 2003, 05:36

Sam Harrison, associate vice chancellor , IT and Telecommunications & chief technical officer

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and IBM Corporation have announced plans to develop a leading-edge computing grid that will significantly strengthen both academic and research programs at the university.

Through a Shared University Research (SUR) award from IBM, A&T is establishing a Linux-based grid that will significantly increase the university's computing and storage resources. The grid will result in increased processing speed and storage capacity that will help reduce the duration of some of its research projects, whose subjects range from agriculture to life sciences. A&T also uses IBM software provided through the IBM Scholars Program.

The grid computing network will enable the university to connect and thus share any computers on the network. Sam Harrison, associate vice chancellor for Information Technology and Telecommunications and chief technical officer of the university, told USBE Online: "The grid technology allows us to take advantage of available computer power anywhere on the network and doesn't require investment of our dollars."

A&T hopes the initial grid will lead to bigger things in the future, says Harrison: "We will share the grid with other departments within the university for now, but our goal is to expand the grid to share with other institutions and with IBM as well."

Through its SUR program IBM awards computing equipment, such as servers, storage systems, and personal computers to colleges around the world to facilitate research projects in areas of mutual interest, including life sciences, grid computing, autonomic computing, and deep computing. The SUR awards also support university projects by connecting top researchers in academia with IBM research personnel. IBM awards approximately 50 SUR grants each year world-wide.

The IBM Scholars Program gives college researchers access to IBM software and related resources to enable more creative teaching, learning, and research.

Margaret Ashida, corporate university relations director, IBM

These programs are more than a public service; they help IBM meet its own technical and recruitment objectives, according to Margaret Ashida, IBM's director of Corporate University Relations. Her professional focus is on creating a pipeline of technical talent for the company and, she says, "This grant to North Carolina A&T is a wonderful example of how we all benefit. Our goal is to fill the pipeline with technical talent, and we seek to nurture relations with universities by providing access to leading technology as well as through our active recruiting efforts.

"Work force diversity is a marketplace imperative at IBM," Ashida says. "And it's essential for us to continue to work with universities to increase the pool of qualified and diverse talent."