RESEARCH COMPUTING - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Swenson College of Science and Engineering, Duluth
Job Titles:
- Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute Within Research Computing at the University of Minnesota
Ben Lynch is the Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute within Research Computing at the University of Minnesota. In this role he leads the operations, development, and research informatics activities at the institute. He works with leaders throughout the University of Minnesota system as well as other computing centers to facilitate the research objectives of University faculty. While at the University, Ben has worked with faculty and other researchers to facilitate a broad range of high-throughput and high-performance workflows.
Ben is formally trained in physical chemistry, and has extensive experience with wave-based and density-based electronic structure methods for thermochemistry and thermochemical kinetics.
Job Titles:
- Director of Finance and Research Administration
Brian is the Director of Finance and Research Administration for Research Computing, which includes the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) and U-Spatial. He is the point of contact for all accounting and budgetary functions for all Research Computing units.
Job Titles:
- Associate Vice President
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
Job Titles:
- Co - Director of Research Informatics
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Senior Director, Infrastructure and Production, Office of Information Technology
Job Titles:
- GIS Specialist, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Graduate Research Assistant, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Associate Vice Chancellor for Graduate Education and Research, University of Minnesota Duluth
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Head
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor
After first studying first medicine and then physics at St. Andrews University in Scotland, Graham fell in with a bad crowd of Minnesota physicists at Fermilab, and found himself at the University of Minnesota, managing an assortment of physics research and other systems. While there he was able to execute many transitions in technology, such as VAX/VMS to Unix to Linux, and had the opportunity to build many successful large-scale data storage systems and compute clusters.
In 2016 Graham moved to the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, where he has been able to take part in many interesting initiatives such as Ceph storage systems and the Stratus OpenStack platform for controlled access data. Graham manages the operations of the Advanced Systems Operations team at MSI. This group comprises the experts who maintain the supercomputers and related infrastructure at MSI.
Job Titles:
- GIS Technician, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Director of Research Computing in the Research & Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota
- Director of Research Computing, RIO
James (Jim) Wilgenbusch is the Director of Research Computing in the Research & Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Jim is responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of the four major computational research areas under the Office of the Vice President for Research: the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI), U-Spatial, the International Institute for Biosensing (IIB), and the Data Science Initiative (DSI). In this role he leads University-wide initiatives, partners with collegiate senior administrators and works with faculty and administrators to shape research computing at the University of Minnesota, ensures the excellence of existing activities, and facilitates the implementation of new programs. Jim is also involved at a national level in the promotion and development of research cyberinfrastructure and plays a variety of roles in organizations such as the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC), Campus Research Computing Consortium (CARCC), and the National Science Foundation's Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs.
Jim maintains research activities in the study and implementation of models, methods and software used in phylogenetic inference and for over 15 years has been an invited faculty member at workshops and seminars on this same topic. Prior to coming to the University of Minnesota, Jim was a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Scientific Computing and the founding director of Florida State University's Research Computing Center. While at FSU Jim co-founded the Sunshine State Education and Research Computing Alliance (SSERCA) to bring together Florida's geographically distributed academic organizations and high-end compute and data storage resources in order to better support statewide research and create regional synergies.
Job Titles:
- Project Coordinator, Duluth
Job Titles:
- Geospatial Data Scientist, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- GIS Specialist, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Director of Outreach and Training
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Associate University Librarian for Research, Libraries
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, Duluth
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Graduate Research Assistant, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Director of U - Spatial
- Director, Twin Cities
- Principal or Co - Investigator
Len Kne is the director of U-Spatial, an internationally recognized center that created a model that serves and drives a fast-growing need for expertise in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and spatial computing across the University. U-Spatial has supported over 2,000 researchers across 150 departments and centers through a help desk, training, application development, database design, consulting, and events. Before joining the University of Minnesota in 2011, Len had leadership roles with GIS and Information Technologies in higher education, construction, government, and non-profit organizations. Kne has extensive experience designing and hosting scalable databases and GIS infrastructure. Technologies include Postgres/PostGIS, Oracle, Esri ArcGIS, MapServer, and GeoServer. He has overseen the development of over 50 web-based mapping applications
Len has served as a principal or co-investigator on several research projects sponsored by regional, state, and the private sectors, including the Minnesota Department of Commerce, Minnesota State Auditor, Minnesota Department of Health, and Esri. He is on the faculty of the Master of Geographic Information Science program and teaches project management, spatial databases, and a variety of graduate seminar classes focusing on the use of technology in GIS. Len is an active member and on the leadership team of the Minnesota Geospatial Council, the coordinating body for the State's geospatial community. He speaks regularly at national and regional conferences about the importance of integrating spatial thinking into research and teaching.
Job Titles:
- GIS Specialist, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Spatial Data Analyst & Curator, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor, Department of Veterinary Population Medicine
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Distinguished McKnight University Professor, Department of Psychology Member, Research Advisory Council
Job Titles:
- GIS Developer, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Director of the International Institute for Biosensing
- Director, International Institute for Biosensing ( IIB )
Patricia Khashayar is the Director of the International Institute for Biosensing (IIB) in the Research Computing, Research & Innovation Office at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. In this role, she leads a coordinated and collaborative national and international initiative that brings together experts from academia, nonprofits, industry, and government agencies. Her work focuses on developing real partnerships, identifying barriers to advancing biosensing research, and generating innovative solutions.
A Medical Doctor by training, Patricia holds a PhD in Nanobiotechnology and Biomedical Engineering. She got her MBA in entrepreneurship from London Business School. She has led and participated in numerous national and international projects aimed at improving personalized care. Her research spans from multimorbidity studies and identifying risk factors, exposomes, and shared biomarkers to developing multi-modal multi-omics biosensors and point-of-care (PoC) tools for patient stratification, early diagnosis, and treatment monitoring. She has obtained various grants from the European Commission to develop proteomics and genomics point of care solutions for various diseases such as osteoporosis and cervical cancer. She has published more than 150 articles, 1 granted patent and 1 monograph.
As a Research Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, she continues her research in precision sensing and exposomics, expanding her focus to applications that enhance human well-being beyond healthcare.
Before joining the University of Minnesota, Patricia was affiliated with the University of Gent, where she remains a Guest Professor. In her role, she served as an expert on various panels such as the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) interdisciplinary Panel and European Innovation Council (EIC) SME for the European Commission.
Patricia is also active in various international organizations. She is a member of the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF)'s Committee of Scientific Advisors (CSA), which provides global recommendations for osteoporosis and other musculoskeletal diseases. Additionally, she is the chair of IEEE Twin Cities Sensor Council Chapter as well as IEEE Twin Cities Women in Engineering Affiliated section.
Job Titles:
- Geospatial Operations Manager, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor and Director
Job Titles:
- Geospatial Developer, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
Sarah Landwehr is the Research Computing Administrative Lead. Sarah provides administrative oversight for Research Computing units, including process development, scheduling, hiring and human resources, correspondence, web content creation, and user communications. Sarah is also the point contact for the Research Computing funding opportunities.
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, Twin Cities
Job Titles:
- Manager, Outreach and Education, Twin Cities
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- Research Assistant, Twin Cities
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- Associate Director, Duluth
Job Titles:
- Research Associate, Duluth
Job Titles:
- Co - Director of Research Informatics
Thomas Pengo manages the analysts and consultants who provide expert informatics support to U of M researchers. He also provides support to the University Imaging Centers and provides imaging informatics support
Thomas obtained his BSc and MSc in Computer Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in 2005. His PhD was defended in 2010 at the University of Navarra, with the title "Automation of Early Lung Cancer Detection", a work he developed at the Center for Applied Medical Research in Pamplona. During his Ph.D. he was a visiting scientist at the CBIA in Brno and at Sudar Lab in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After a two years postdoc at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne working on the analysis of super-resolution microscopy images at the LEB he worked as an image analyst at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona in the Advanced Light Microscopy Unit and in the laboratory of Luis Serrano, before moving to the U of M.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design Director, Minnesota Design Center Dayton Hudson Chair in Urban Design, College of Design
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
- Regents Professor
Job Titles:
- Member of the Research Computing Advisory Committee
Job Titles:
- Research Assistant, Twin Cities