User:Surascience/sandbox

INTRODUCTION

The Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) is a member association of 63 research universities in the United States and Canada that builds and operates major research facilities and research infrastructure and leads collaborative research and science education initiatives involving its members and others. SURA's activities are supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the Office of Naval Research, the Commonwealth of Virginia, the City of Newport News, and others. SURA is recognized as a tax-exempt organization under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). Its headquarters are located in Washington DC.

SURA DELIVERS USER-CENTERED SCIENTIFIC INFRASTRUCTURE AND RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS

Jefferson Lab

In 1983, SURA was selected by a joint Department of Energy/National Science Foundation peer review panel to design, build, and operate the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab), a US National Laboratory and a Government-Owned Contractor Operated (GOCO) facility located in Newport News, VA. Jefferson Lab is one of only 25 US laboratories designated as a Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) and has been operated since 2006 by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC,  an organization controlled 60% by SURA.

Jefferson Lab is home to an international user facility featuring the world’s highest energy continuous electron beam accelerator. Each year, over 1,200 scientists, engineers, faculty, and students come from around the world to use the laboratory’s accelerator and other specialized equipment and facilities. Education is an important aspect of Jefferson Lab operations. Since 1993, 463 doctoral alumni of 93 universities in 24 countries have conducted some or all of their thesis research at the laboratory and today there are typically over 100 on-site graduate students who are ‘resident’ at the laboratory at any given time. These statistics speak not only of the reach of Jefferson Lab contributions to scientific research around the nation and world but also to the scientific diversity of Jefferson Lab research as a result of expertise brought to Jefferson Lab by its “alumni,” their faculty advisors, and other national and international users who come to collaborate with Jefferson Lab’s in-house scientific and engineering staff.

SURA’s and Jefferson Lab’s recognized expertise includes the engineering and construction of the some of the most sophisticated accelerator technologies yet developed and this expertise is routinely provided to assist with the construction and enhancement of accelerators and related facilities at other national laboratories and firms in the US and abroad, including the design and fabrication of some of the most advanced accelerator components for highly specialized research facilities around the world. Jefferson Lab also used its accelerator engineering expertise to design, build, and operate the world’s highest continuous power free electron laser for the US Navy/Office of Naval Research. The extensive in-house accelerator engineering capabilities are further supplemented by the Center for Accelerator Science in the Physics Department at Old Dominion University (a member of SURA), operated in partnership with Jefferson Lab, and with extensive joint faculty appointments and engineering collaborations with SURA’s member universities. The nearly three dozen US Patents on accelerator technologies granted to Jefferson Lab engineers is further evidence of this expertise.

Jefferson Lab also actively participates in productive collaborations for the development of new medical technologies. Jefferson Lab has particular expertise in Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and some of its more than 40 granted patents on medical imaging technologies have led to FDA-approved devices that are being commercialized in the US and abroad, including products of Dilon Technologies, a firm co-located with Jefferson Lab engineers in a technology incubator facility on the Jefferson Lab campus. Dilon was founded based on Jefferson Lab patents and collaboration and SURA provided the firm with early startup funds that were important in transforming Jefferson Lab technology into a commercial and clinical reality.

SURA’s expertise is not limited to the engineering and operation of one of the world’s most sophisticated accelerators. For the past three decades, it has led the management and operations (M&O) of a major government-owned contractor-operated (GOCO) laboratory facility. Responsibility for a GOCO facility, such as Jefferson Lab, has provided SURA with specialized experience in the stewardship of a tax-payer funded laboratory that includes not only daily operations but also compliance with federal and agency-specific requirements for fiscal and financial matters, facility construction and upgrades, and physical and cyber security. GOCO FFRDC Laboratories sponsored by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, like Jefferson Lab, differ from those of some other agencies because they exist primarily as a venue for open international scientific collaborations by providing unique research facilities and expertise to the leading scientists from around the world based only on the quality of their proposed research as determined through independent peer review.

Cyberinfrastructure Facilities: SURAnet, SURAgrid, XSEDE, Teragrid

Under the leadership of Dr. Glenn Ricart, Chief Information Officer for the University of Maryland (a founding member of SURA), SURA established SURAnet as one of NSFnet’s original regional networks to provide connectivity within 13 states and the District of Columbia, to other regional networks in the United States, and to the rest of the Internet. SURAnet became operational in March 1987. Through SURAnet, SURA participated in the development of Internet communications standards and telecommunications protocols that enabled researchers and federal agencies to communicate and work in this early Internet environment. SURAnet made it possible for educational institutions, government entities, and private companies to connect to the Internet.

In 1994, SURA announced its intent to sell SURAnet to Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, Inc., adding nearly 70% to the commercial internet service provider's subscription base. The sale was completed in March 1995, with SURA using proceeds to establish an endowment for investment in new research initiatives of mutual interest to SURA and its member universities.

In 2003, SURA established SURAgrid, a high performance computing collaboration between 27 colleges and universities in 15 states. SURAgrid allowed participating organizations to make their high performance research computers available on the 'grid' to provide an opportunity and mechanism to share excess computational capabilities on one campus with other participants for research needs. SURA also formed partnerships with IBM and Dell to make group discounts on high performance computing systems available to SURAgrid members. The first high performance computers to be deployed on SURAgrid were hosted by Texas A&M University, Louisiana State University, and Georgia State University, all members of SURA. SURA worked with AT&T and Internet2 to bring high bandwidth connectivity to universities, including minority serving institutions. 13  As an institutional partner in the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), SURA joins four of its member universities and fifteen other universities, federal laboratories, and educational organizations in managing the operations and resources of one of the world's most advanced, powerful, and robust collection of digital resources. 14  This five-year project is funded at $121 million and is the successor to the NSF's TeraGrid project, where SURA served as an outreach partner.

SURA is a member of the XSEDE Education Team. 15  In this role, SURA has responsibility for leading engagement of underrepresented groups, including minority serving institutions. SURA's PI for XSEDE activities brings training and outreach workshops that include subject matter experts drawn from the XSEDE organization to campuses across the country to increase the awareness of XSEDE's capabilities, provide information on accessing those capabilities, and serve as the "face" of XSEDE who new or potential XSEDE users can reach out to for assistance.

Coastal, Ocean, and Environmental Modeling and Research

SURA's activities in coastal, ocean, and environmental modeling began in 2003 with the SURA Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) program, an open-access, distributed scientific laboratory for environmental model improvement. This program is designed to provide real-time prediction and visualization of extreme coastal events. The multi-institutional research initiative is operated from the SURA data center located at Texas A&M University. 16

In 2010, SURA received its first phase of funding from the National Atmospheric and Oceanographic Administration (NOAA) to fund A Super-Regional Testbed to Improve Models of Environmental Processes on the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Coasts. 17  This activity involved three dozen topical principal investigators at two dozen institutions working at U.S. and Canadian universities and government laboratories. SURA is now in its third phase of funding from NOAA in support of multi-institution "Testbed" coastal and environmental modeling and the scope of the project has expanded to include the Pacific coast and the Caribbean. Professor Rick Luettich from the University of North Carolina (a SURA member) has managed the research activities as the programs' Principal Investigator.

SURA THEN AND NOW

SURA traces its origins back to 1979 when University of Virginia Physics Professor James McCarthy participated in an international conference on the future of nuclear physics research. Until that time, McCarthy's work had involved the use of atomic particles such as protons. During the conference, McCarthy realized that the use of a continuous beam of electrons would offer new research opportunities in nuclear physics because the characteristics of electrons are considerably different than for protons that he and others had been using. At the time, no such facility or machine existed. 18

Professor Robert Coleman, Chairman of the Virginia Physics Department provided McCarthy with the initial funding to hire a postdoctoral associate to further investigate the possibility of a continuous electron accelerator for nuclear physics research. McCarthy would later collaborate with others, principally Hans von Baeyer of the College of William and Mary, Harry Holmgren of the University of Maryland, and Dana Hamel of Virginia Commonwealth University. These researchers engaged their universities' administrators and Presidents Frank Herford and Thomas Graves of the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary, respectively, worked to persuade their counterparts at other universities to join a collaborative effort to build the accelerator that McCarthy envisioned. In 1980, ten universities voted to establish SURA, which was incorporated in Virginia in August 1980. By the organizational meeting in December 1980, thirteen founding members selected their board representatives to SURA. 19  By 1983, SURA's 23 members collaborated on the winning proposal to build what would become the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, VA, a U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratory.

SURA's organizers consulted with Norman Ramsey, a Harvard University physics professor and future Nobel laureate, who was involved with the establishment of other university research consortia such as Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), which was involved with the operations of the Brookhaven National Laboratory and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and Universities Research Association (URA), operator of the Fermilab. SURA's Board and Organizational structure were modeled after those of URA. Massachusetts Institute of Technology became SURA's first member outside of the southeast U.S. region in 2001; in 2010, the University of Regina became its first international member. 20

SURA’s approach to building and operating major research infrastructure and facilitating multi-institution research and education collaborations is based on active engagement at the institutional-level involving each institution's research scientists, research administrators, and university administrators. The success of this approach is evidenced in all of the organization's activities, including: contributions by nine SURA member universities to the nearly $330 million upgrade to Jefferson Lab's electron accelerator through the design and construction of major instrumentation components; 21  a NOAA-funded ocean and coastal modeling research activity involving dozens of researchers at U.S. and Canadian universities and government laboratories with Dr. Rick Luettich, Director of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina (a SURA member university) serving as the Principle Investigator; and the National Science Foundation's Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), where SURA is proud to be an institutional partner. 22

Although modeled after other university research consortia, SURA is unique is that it actively and deliberately engages its institutional partners at the research scientist, research administration, and university administration levels in all of its endeavors. New research and outreach initiatives are the responsibility of SURA's Development Committee, currently headed by Dr. Kelvin Droegemeier, 23 Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma and Vice Chair of the National Science Board at the National Science Foundation. 24

SURA MANAGEMENT AND GOVERNANCE

SURA's daily operations are the responsibility of Professor Jerry P. Draayer, 25 who became SURA's President and CEO in 1998 after serving previously as Chairman of the organization's Board of Trustees. 26  He has been a faculty member or Department Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University (LSU) since 1983. In addition to his work at SURA, Professor Draayer continues to conduct research in theoretical and computational physics at LSU under funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. He currently holds an endowed Professorship at LSU, is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a Corresponding Member of the Mexican National Academy of Sciences. His international experience includes previous professional appointments in Germany, France, and Denmark.

Professor Draayer is supported by a senior management team with extensive experience in the management and operations of research laboratories and in corporate research and finance, including in an international context. 27  Members of SURA's senior management also have international professional experience, including serving as the European-based International Corporate Treasurer of Reed Elsevier (a major international scientific publisher), as a research scientist at the Paul Scherer Institut (the Swiss National Laboratory), and as research manager for science and engineering programs in Germany funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Corporate oversight and governance is provided by SURA's Council of Presidents (consisting of the presidents of SURA's member universities) and its Board of Trustees. Institutional representation to SURA occurs most directly through the Board of Trustees through its biannual meeting. SURA Trustees are appointed by their university's president and generally consist of research vice presidents or other senior research administrators.

SURA's Board of Trustees provides oversight to the organization's research activities through four topical committees: the JSA Programs Committee (with responsibility for Jefferson Lab activities), the Coastal and Environmental Research Committee, the Information Technology Committee, and the Development and Relations Committee (with responsibility or new research and outreach initiatives). See http://sura.org/about/members.html, last visited on July 4, 2014.

Walter Sullivan, Proposal to Build Powerful Electron Accelerator Endorsed, The New York Times, p C3, Apr 26, 1983; Philip J. Hilts and Michael Isikoff, Virginia Wins Struggle For Nuclear-Physics Site After Illinois Bows Out, The Washington Post, p. C1, Jul 20, 1983.

See http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist/#activity, last visited on July 4, 2014.

See http://jsallc.org/, last visited on July 4, 2014.

Christoph W. Leemann, David R. Douglas, and Geoffrey A. Krafft, The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility: CEBAF at the Jefferson Laboratory, Annu. Rev. Nucl. Part. Sci., p. 413, 2001.

B. W. Williams, Jefferson Lab Free Electron Laser 10 kW Upgrade - Lessons Learned, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, May 2005. (Available at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a434107.pdf).

See http://odu.edu/sci/research/cas, last visited on July 4, 2014.

See http://www.jlab.org/highlights/med.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://www.dilon.com/corporate-profile/, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://www.nsfnet-legacy.org/archives/06--Community.pdf, last visited July 4, 2014.

William M. Bulkeley, Bolt Beranek Agrees to Buy SURAnet, An Internet Concern Serving Southeast, The Wall Street Journal, p B7, Dec 20, 1994.

Company Briefs, The New York Times, p. 4, March 14, 1995.

Bill Pietrucha, Virginia Gets First Access Point To Internet2, Newsbytes (Post-Newsweek Business Information Inc.), May 5, 1998; Ronald Roach, AT&T, university consortium to advance grid networking, Black Issues in Higher Education, p. 36, January 15, 2004

See https://www.xsede.org/leaders, last visited July 4, 2014.

See https://www.xsede.org/education-outreach-blog/-/blogs/121290;jsessionid=3946BED08A27FD724CA48218A9D895F6, last visited July 4, 2014.

Zhibin Mai, On Design and Realization of New Generation Mission-Critical Application Systems, Doctoral Dissertation submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University (Computer Engineering), May 2011.

See, e.g., http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/modeling/reports/part1_testbed_to_improve_models_june2012.pdf last visited on June 11, 2014.

http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/textonlyarchive/May_1996/mccarthy.txt; September 1994; Catherine Westfall, The Founding of CEBAF, 1979 to 1987, Michigan State University, September 1994; Physics Today, p. 59, November 1984.

Westfall 6-7.

See http://www.uregina.ca/web-directories/research-sites/, last visited July 4, 2014.

Idaho State University, Old Dominion University, University of Regina, Ohio University, College of William and Mary, Norfolk State University, James Madison University, Catholic University of America. See e.g., http://www.df.unipi.it/~marcucci/ElbaXII/talks/rossi.pdf, visited on June 11, 2014.

See e.g., https://www.xsede.org/leaders. Linda Akli, of SURA, leads outreach activities for XSEDE. SURA joins four of its members – University of Tennessee, Rice University, University of Virginia, University of Texas – and fourteen other institutions in the XSEDE partnership.

See http://sura.org/about/org_and_admindev.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/members/bio.jsp?pers=22472, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://www.phys.lsu.edu/newwebsite/people/draayer.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://sura.org/about/management_draayer.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://sura.org/about/management.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

See http://sura.org/about/org_and_admin.html, last visited July 4, 2014.

http://www.ilcacinc.org/

http://www.hispanicphysicists.org/