{"id":36730,"date":"2022-06-28T12:44:51","date_gmt":"2022-06-28T16:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/?p=36730"},"modified":"2022-06-28T12:45:49","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T16:45:49","slug":"paschalidis-new-director-of-hariri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/paschalidis-new-director-of-hariri\/","title":{"rendered":"ENG\u2019s Ioannis Paschalidis New Director of Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering<\/a> will have a new director as of July 1. Ioannis Paschalidis<\/a>, a College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering and of computing and data sciences, will oversee the institute\u2019s move into a new, eye-arresting building (the largest on the Charles River Campus), the Center for Computing & Data Sciences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Paschalidis replaces Eric Kolaczyk<\/a>, who is leaving BU after almost a quarter of a century to move with his family to Canada.<\/p>\n

The appointment adds to Paschalidis\u2019 already impressive portfolio. He directs BU\u2019s Center for Information and Systems Engineering<\/a> (CISE), which researches and designs intelligent data systems. He cowrote the proposal that won BU a matching state grant for the University\u2019s new RASTIC<\/a> robotics lab, which will enable more undergraduate and master\u2019s students to research and test next-gen robots and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

The Center for Computing & Data Sciences, whose construction is on track to finish later this year, represents BU\u2019s planting the flag in a field that is remaking academic disciplines, and society. Among Hariri\u2019s neighbors in the building will be the new Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences<\/a> and the College of Arts & Sciences departments of computer science and of mathematics and statistics.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutting all of these groups under the same roof, I think, will further facilitate interactions,\u201d Paschalidis says.<\/p>\n

Beyond the move, he says he has three priorities as the institute\u2019s new leader, the first involving forging closer ties to the School of Medicine. \u201cI feel\u2014and I think the University agrees\u2014that we have not leveraged as much as possible the fact that we have a medical school,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I think there\u2019s much more that can be done\u201d to arrange collaborations between engineers and computer scientists and doctors\u2014those who do research as well as healers on the hospital ward. \u201cThere is a lot of activity these days around AI and health, AI and medicine, automation, new sensing technologies that would improve the way we can sense on a daily basis what happens, identify diseases, find new biomarkers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to increase the interaction between the people that are doing the science, the technology, and the algorithms, and the people that are in medicine and health.\u201d<\/p>\n

A second initiative will be to maintain \u201cthe service aspect of Hariri\u201d to BU professors, including the institute\u2019s fellows program, which provides research support to junior faculty and to students. That support also brings different disciplines together in \u201ccommunity-building activity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The third will be to continue \u201cfocused research,\u201d that is, \u201cinternal funding mechanisms for encouraging groups at the University to coalesce around a specific field\u201d in yearlong research teams. \u201cThe main objective is to form teams that will then have enough cohesion and enough preliminary work so that they can go out, they can write a proposal [for competitive grant funding], and be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paschalidis takes the helm at a critical point, says Gloria Waters<\/a>, vice president and associate provost for research, \u201cas we launch new efforts in the fields of computing and data sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis deep roots in engineering, his role as a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, as well as his extensive collaborations across the Charles River and Medical campuses position him well to build on the tremendous success the Institute has had in fostering collaborative research that connects the faculty across the University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am certain that his focus on research excellence and his highly collaborative style will further lead to establishing the Hariri Institute as an internationally recognized center of excellence,\u201d Waters adds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering will have a new director as of July 1. Ioannis Paschalidis, a College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering and of computing and data sciences, will oversee the institute\u2019s move into a new, eye-arresting building (the largest on the Charles River Campus), the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10316,"featured_media":36731,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36730"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36732,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36730\/revisions\/36732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}