1.0 The Transition of the Directorship
This year, the Center's management experienced a major change. Don Greenberg stepped down as founding Director, having served four and a half years to guide the Center from its inception, both administratively and technically. The Policy Committee recommended Andy van Dam as his replacement. As a result, this year the staff of Brown and Cornell have spent considerable effort in transferring the reins from Cornell to Brown.1.1 The New Organization
As can be seen in Figure 1, the overall structure of the Center has changed little. The Policy Committee and the Director still consult each other as before. The External Advisory Board still serves as a resource for the entire Center. The largest changes were those in the Director's staff. Before, Cornell's Graphics Lab Manager served as part-time assistant to the Director, helping him run research, education, and outreach, as well as maintaining general administrative organization. He was assisted by a part-time secretary at Utah who handled a number of administrative chores, including handling the Center's database. This load was too much for one person to handle, and in fact some administrative chores were moved to the site coordinator at Brown even before the change in Directorship.
To strengthen the Center's ability to carry out its mission of research, education, and outreach, the staff has been reorganized, centralized, and considerably enlarged. The Assistant Director, Brook Conner, now focuses principally on research collaborations and upper-level education, though he is aware of all of the activities of the Center. His role involves helping the Director develop research programs such as the telecollaboration project and designing upper-level education programs, such as the Center's televideo seminar. Anne Spalter is the Center's Outreach Director and is responsible for the Center's outreach strategy as well as the Brown site's summer workshop for high school teachers. General administration of the Center is now handled by the Administrative Coordinator, Lisa Manekofsky, who maintains the Center's database, performs administrative tasks, and helps to organize special events (such as the upcoming EAB meeting and the October 1995 Vannevar Bush Symposium).
2.0 New Center Faculty
In addition to the new staff discussed above of the Director's staff, the Center has hired new faculty -- two exceptionally qualified faculty researchers, Prof. Jim Arvo and Prof. Peter Schröder, both now at the Center's Caltech site. Together with Al Barr, they create one of the strongest mathematically-oriented faculty teams in computer graphics and enhance our collective research capability.3.0 Membership of the External Advisory Board
The Chair of the External Advisory Board is Robert Sproull of Sun Microsystems. Other members include:
The Center has maintained a highly visible presence at SIGGRAPH and other professional venues, presenting papers, panels, and courses to share our foundational research efforts. Our unique, customized televideo facility is operational and being used productively; it is vital in facilitating both our distributed research and teaching missions. Outreach activities represent a significant aspect of the Center and are stimulating to both outreach program participants and Center members.
I have been pleased with the successful transition of both the Directorship and the Center's administrative functions. The increase in administrative staff has enabled us to provide better services in many areas. For example, we have developed major new research initiatives in the Center such as the telecollaboration project. We have also sponsored new special projects such as the Vannevar Bush Symposium and the upcoming 1997 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics (of which I am the General Chair). In addition, we have created informational and publicity materials and a quarterly newsletter and will also be producing a yearly video compendium.
In order to continue conducting leading research and meeting our Center-related goals, four major areas require our attention in the coming years. First, we need to continue to amplify the combined strengths of our Center with collaborative cross-site research projects. To this end, I plan to allocate the majority of the Director's Pool to a single project -- our multi-site research effort in telecollaboration.
Second, there is a strong likelihood that the Center will be affected by the national trend of reduced support for long-term foundational science. We remain committed to our mission, but realize that we must operate in a climate different from the one in which our proposal was originally written. In particular, we have already lost ARPA's block support-which provided nearly one third of our funding and will now have to work hard to raise funds by responding to ARPA's BAAs and pursuing other sources.
Third, related to the above, we need to intensify our campaign to attract industry support and collaboration. New strategies must creatively address the Center's relationship with an industry that is struggling with diminished profits and a rapidly changing marketplace (e.g., the most recent announcements by SGI/Sun/Netscape and by Microsoft of next-generation graphics/multimedia APIs and support for object behaviors).
Fourth, we have not been as successful as we would have liked in drawing in women and underrepresented minorities. I have been personally committed to working on these issues throughout my professional life and readily accept the responsibility as Center Director to pursue initiates that will improve the dismal statistics in our field.
It is an exciting challenge to assume the role of an NSF Science and Technology Center Director. I look forward to the privilege of leading an organization comprised of so many talented individuals from institutions with rich traditions in the field.