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SILS welcomes the DICE group
Oct. 28, 2008 - The School of Information and Library Science is pleased to welcome the Data Intensive Cyber Environments (DICE) group to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The group includes 14 team members, some of whom have already, or will soon be relocating to Chapel Hill. They include:
Reagan Moore: Professor
Reagan Moore was appointed professor at SILS on Aug. 1, 2008. Moore is director of the award-winning Data Intensive Cyber Environments (DICE) group formerly of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego. Moore previously was director of Data and Knowledge Systems at SDSC where he coordinated research efforts in development of data grids, digital libraries and preservation environments based on the Storage Resource Broker data grid and the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System. His projects include the National Archives and Records Administration Transcontinental Persistent Archive Prototype and an NSF Software Development for Cyberinfrastructure grant. His interests include rule-based data management, data grids, digital libraries, persistent archives and genealogy.
“Reagan is an eminent leader, researcher and collaborator,” said Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. “His research and scholarship have contributed both theoretical foundations and understandings along with empirical results and practical solutions to the scientific data, grid computing and digital preservation communities. His contributions are innovative and outstanding, and have stimulated and influenced others worldwide. We enthusiastically welcome him and members of the DICE group to SILS.”
Moore has a Ph.D. in plasma physics from the University of California, San Diego and a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology.
Richard Marciano: Professor
Richard Marciano was appointed SILS professor on Aug. 1, 2008. He served as director of the Sustainable Archives & Library Technologies (SALT) Laboratory and lead scientist in the DICE Group at SDSC at the University of California San Diego after his initial appointment there in 1995 as computational environmental scientist. He has also served as an affiliated professor in the Urban Studies and Planning Program in the Division of Social Sciences at UCSD.
He is recognized as an international leader in digital preservation, largely based on his ability to bridge the worlds of computer science and the cultural heritage community, eliciting and translating user needs into functional requirements and system designs.
Marciano’s interests are with data management, digital archiving and long-term preservation. Current research projects include eLegacy (preservation of geospatial data), T-RACES (cyberinfrastructure for the humanities), WRAP (preservation workflows for digital video), informatics for urban planning, and DCAPE (distributed custodial archival preservation environments).
“Richard is clearly a visionary and collaborative researcher whose greatest strength is his ability to work effectively at the intersections of multiple disciplines,” said Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. “His contributions to the areas of digital libraries, digital preservation and community informatics are innovative and outstanding. I am delighted to welcome him to the SILS faculty.”
Marciano carried out a post-doc in computational geography and has a Ph.D. and master’s degree in computer science from the University of Iowa; and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and avionics, from the National School of Civil Aviation, Toulouse, France.
Arcot Rajasekar: Professor
Arcot Rajasekar (Raja)was appointed a SILS professor on Aug. 1, 2008. He previously held the role of director of the Data Grids Technology Group at the SDSC, and he is the lead designer behind the concepts in the Storage Resource Broker and the iRODS data grid systems. He has multiple publications in the areas of logic programming, dedutive databases, data grids, digital library and persistent archives. He is co-author of the book, Foundations of Disjunctive Logic Programming from the MIT Press, and he taught as an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky at Lexington at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.
“Raja is an innovative and collaborative researcher who works at the intersections of technical and application domains,” said Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. “His contributions to the areas of grid computing and data grids, information architectures, open source software and their application to digital libraries, digital preservation and curation are outstanding. I am pleased to welcome him to the faculty.”
Rajasekar has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland; a Master’s degree in computer science from the University of Madras, Madras, India; and a B.E. (Honors), Electronics and Communications from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India.
Antoine C. de Torcy: Research Associate
Antoine C. de Torcy will join SILS as research associate. de Torcy was previously a research engineer with the San Diego Supercomputer Center where he managed several projects for the DICE group. He assisted in the design and implementation of two data grid middleware systems developed by the DICE group: the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) and its successor, the Rule Oriented Data System (iRODS). At SILS, de Torcy will continue his work with the group.
de Torcy was an IT specialist for the National Institute for Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics, in Paris, France where he completed an internship in a physics research laboratory. He tested and adapted client interfaces to the data grid middleware system used for storing and sharing data between laboratories.
He has a master’s degree with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics from the University of Paris Dauphine, Paris, France
Chien-yi Hou: Research Associate
Chien-yi Hou has agreed to join SILS as research associate. He comes to SILS from the San Diego Supercomputer Center where he worked as a digital preservation specialist with the DICE group. He has worked on the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center project, T-RACES(a Testbed for the Redlining Archives of California’s Exclusionary Spaces)and DIGARCH(Digital Preservation Lifecycle Management).
Hou will continue his work with the DICE group as he researches, designs, implements and monitors high performance dataflow systems to automate tasks related to data management using iRODS data grid technology. iRODS is a open source project supported by NSF(National Science Foundation) and NARA(National Archives and Records Administration).
He has a master’s degree in computer science from the University of California, San Diego, and he received his bachelor’s degree in computer and information science from the National Chiao Tung Univeristy, Taiwan.
A formal reception was held in the DICE Group's honor on Oct. 6, 2008 at the at the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence in Graham Memorial Hall. People from across the UNC at Chapel Hill campus and the Triangle community attended to welcome this world-renowned team of researchers. For more information on the DICE group, click here.