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• Bobby Schnabel receives TechPoint Mira's Trailblazer in Technology award

Bobby Schnabel receives TechPoint Mira's Trailblazer in Technology award

• May 7, 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing Dean Bobby Schnabel is this year’s recipient of the TechPoint Mira Trailblazer in Technology award recognizing individuals whose vision and efforts in advancing technology have made a lasting and significant impact on Indiana.

Schnabel received the award May 3 in recognition of the successes and growth the school has seen in undergraduate enrollment, graduate enrollment and research funding, and for the number of graduates retained by Indiana tech companies.

TechPoint Mira Trailblazers are among the state’s most influential leaders on technology issues and are seen as catalysts for growth and success in the Indiana high-tech community. Schnabel joins a list of other Trailblazer winners with IU connections, including IU President Michael A. McRobbie and IU alumni Don Brown, Scott Dorsey, Scott Jones and Mark Hill.

McRobbie said Schnabel’s research, academic and administrative credentials made him a perfect fit to take the helm of the school seven years ago.

“I think you can see the importance of size and massive scale of diversity and versatility at the School of Informatics and Computing,” McRobbie said. “Bobby has accentuated all of those virtues and built upon them in a really major way.”

IU Bloomington Provost and Executive Vice President Lauren Robel added that Schnabel “really opened the campus to the possibilities that computer science and information technology bring to every discipline in the 21st century.”

Since becoming dean in 2007, Schnabel has seen undergraduate enrollment at IU Bloomington triple, schoolwide graduate enrollment nearly double, and research funding more than double to $17 million annually. About 60 percent of the school’s students remain in Indiana for tech careers after graduation.

Last year the school, under Schnabel’s leadership, launched one of the nation’s first and broadest online data science programs in an effort to help the U.S. meet a projected shortage of data analysts, data solutions architects and other data science positions of nearly 2 million workers by 2018. The program, approved by IU’s Board of Trustees and by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, offers a Certificate in Data Science.

In 2011 he was one of 12 people honored at the White House as a Champion of Change for leading efforts to recruit and retain girls and women in science, technology, engineering and math fields. Earlier that year, the school had announced that the number of women enrolled in computing-related majors over the previous 18 months had doubled, a goal met six months ahead of a self-imposed two-year deadline.

Schnabel also worked with an initial set of 10 individual investors in the creation of the school’s Building Entrepreneurs in Software and Technology fund, which supports at least $200,000 in annual investment money to students submitting the best plans for annual investments in student-led Internet, software or technology companies.

Founded in 2000 as the first school of its kind in the United States, the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing is dedicated to research and teaching across a broad range of computing and information technology, with emphasis on science, applications and societal implications. The school's programs include computer science, informatics and information and library science. The school, which includes locations at Bloomington and IUPUI, administers a variety of bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. programs, including the first-ever Ph.D. in informatics. The school is dedicated to excellence in education and research, to partnerships that bolster economic development and entrepreneurship, and to increasing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities in computing and technology. 

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• IU School of Informatics and Computing