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First 'Research Horizons' event to welcome Pinterest CEO, NSF leader to IU

• Sept. 6, 2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing will welcome leaders from the public and private global technology sectors to IU on Sept. 8 and 9.

Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, and Jim Kurose, assistant director at the National Science Foundation, will visit campus for "Research Horizons." The event will spotlight faculty efforts at the school and spark conversations about how research drives innovation.

Kurose, assistant director of the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at NSF, and Silbermann, co-founder of the social media platform recently valued at $11 billion, will deliver keynote addresses from 9 to 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. to noon, respectively, Sept. 9.

Also delivering a keynote is Thomas Sterling, director of the IU Center for Research in Extreme Scale Technologies, who will speak from 1:45 to 2:45 p.m. Sept. 8.

The school's research will be represented with over 35, five-minute, lightning-round-style presentations from IU School of Informatics and Computing faculty.

Talks are closed to the public, but a livestream will be available. All lectures are open to the media.

"This event is designed to celebrate our school’s research and to facilitate new collaborations," said Martina Barnas, assistant dean for research and director of research collaborations at the IU School of Informatics and Computing. "Research Horizons will be a showcase for a plethora of exciting projects, and it will give a snapshot of the broad spectrum of work being done at our school."

The event also marks the start of another year of remarkable growth at the school, with a record enrollment of 2,878 total students and 14 new tenure-track faculty positions in the 2016-17 academic year. The school also boasts the largest master’s degree program at IU, with 580 students enrolled in its data science graduate program.

Other guest speakers are Dave Acton, university liaison at the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane Division; Tony Armstrong, president and CEO of the IU Research and Technology Corp.; Bob Cruise, chief scientist of the expeditionary department, also of NSWC-Crane; and Martin Kruger, manager of the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance thrust area for the U.S. Department of the Navy’s Office of Naval Research.

The majority of faculty talks will take place on the conference's first day. They will tackle subjects such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, security and privacy, complex systems and network science, bioinformatics and health, programming languages and algorithms, big data, digitally mediated communications and digital humanities. The conference's second day will feature talks on education and informatics for learning.

"The depth and breadth of our faculty's research interests and innovations are phenomenal," said Raj Acharya, dean of the IU School of Informatics and Computing. "Technology plays an increasingly central role in everyone's lives -- in security, health care, education, communications and more -- and our researchers are pushing the forefront in all these, and other, areas."

In addition to welcoming remarks on the first day, Acharya will deliver comments about the school's intelligent systems engineering, the newest program at the school and the first engineering program in IU's history.

"Research Horizons" will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 8 and 9 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Sept 9 at the Cyberinfrastructure Building, 2709 E. 10th St. in Bloomington.

Related Links

• IU Research and Technology Corp.
• IU School of Informatics and Computing