KU News Release

KU invests in research support with key technology appointments

LAWRENCE — To coordinate existing information technology efforts and provide greater support for researchers, the University of Kansas is making two key appointments this summer to new positions on the Lawrence campus.

Dilawar Grewal will join Information Services in August as director of research IT services and will lead the formation of that department. He will work closely with KU’s academic units, libraries, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and research centers to develop and advance research technology services.

Donald F. (Rick) McMullen will join the Office of Research and Graduate Studies in August as director and senior scientist for research computing. He will be responsible for developing a comprehensive research computing environment and identifying and acquiring resources necessary to pursue competitive research and creative activity at KU. He and the existing Research Computing Technologies group will be in the Multidisciplinary Research Building on KU’s west campus.

“Research is central to KU’s mission,” said Denise Stephens, vice provost for information services. “We have to make sure faculty in all disciplines have the tools they need to conduct that research productively. Increasingly, this requires IT resources that facilitate interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration, plus the leadership and expertise to manage those resources effectively.”

For example, a typical project in KU’s Microscopy and Analytical Imaging Lab requires terabytes of computing power to store, identity, search and analyze images. A terabyte is one trillion bytes of data.

The demand for such lab services is growing, said George Wilson, associate vice provost for research.

“Faculty in various disciplines need IT assistance as they design research projects or prepare competitive grant proposals that involve extensive data analysis,” he said.

Grewal currently is assistant vice provost for research and technology at East Tennessee State University, where he is also director of technology and an adjunct faculty member in the College of Education. He previously served for more than 10 years at Texas A&M University in research IT-related positions, including director of research development. He also was the library’s research and development manager, founding director of its digital library and director of the Academy for Advanced Telecommunications and Learning Technologies. He earned a doctorate from Texas A&M in 1994.

McMullen is director and principal scientist in the Pervasive Technology Laboratories at Indiana University. He has been at Indiana since 1990 in a series of IT and research positions and is an adjunct faculty member in its computer science department and School of Informatics. Before coming to Indiana, he worked in academia and industry, including positions at the Supercomputer Computations Research Institute at Florida State University and American Cyanamid Co. as a research scientist and process chemist. McMullen received a doctorate in chemistry from Indiana in 1982.

“Research IT is too complex, too vast in scope and too important for any one organization on campus to manage,” said Steve Warren, vice provost for research and graduate studies. “These two appointments in two key offices give KU strong collaborative leadership that will benefit our researchers and the work they do.”

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The University of Kansas is a major comprehensive research and teaching university. University Relations is the central public relations office for KU's Lawrence campus.