Russ Miller
UB Distinguished Professor

Dept of Computer Science & Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo

2002 Media Coverage

1. Dr. Russ Miller was Director of CCR during this period.
2. Dr. Russ Miller co-Founded the New York State/Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics (and Life Sciences) in 2001.

• December 23: Business First describes the Access Grid Node in the article "UB Installs High Tech Conferencing System."
• December 20: SUNY Today mentions CCR's new access grid and tiled-display wall in their weekly newsletter.
• December 18: Association for Computing Machinery reports of CCR's access grid and tiled-display wall in their weekly news digest.
• December 15: GridToday selects an image submitted by CCR staff of the Bioinformatics Dell Cluster for its weekly cover page.
• December 12: Local CBS affiliate, WIVB Buffalo, ran a news piece about CCR's new access grid.
• December 12: Buffalo News printed a picture of the CCR's new access grid room and tiled-display wall on the front page of the business section and published a small article discussing the 12' x 7' visualization device that is configured from 20 projectors located behind the screen.
• December 12: WBFO radio station ran an interview with Russ Miller and Jeff Tilson about CCR's new access grid and tiled-display wall.
• December 11: University at Buffalo News Services printed the article "At UB's CCR: 15 Million Pixels on a Wall-Sized Screen and a New Way to Collaborate Around the World, Virtually" about the access grid and tiled-display wall
• December 8: GridToday selects another CCR 3D image for its weekly cover page.
• December 5: The article "CCR using larger-than-life technology", found in the UB Reporter, discusses improvements in collaboration and visualization with the new Access Grid node and tiled-display wall.
• December 2: A 3D image from the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus was featured in the Cover Art Contest on the Gridtoday website.
• December 2: Russ Miller, director of the Center for Computational Research, is quoted in the article "Here come the disposable servers" found in The Boston Globe.

• November 25: An article entitled "New computing cluster boosts research center" from the Buffalo Business First discusses the recently added Dell computing cluster as well as the Center for Computational Research ranking at www.top500.org.
• November 20: The article "University at Buffalo Adds Second Dell Cluster to Track Great Lakes Pollution, Fuel General Research", from a Dell press release, talks about in depth the recent additions at the Center for Computational Research.
• November 20: The University at Buffalo is home to the world's 22nd fastest supercomputer, according to the article "Powerful Machine" from the Buffalo News. According to Dr. Russ Miller, who led the effort in acquiring the Dell 600 processor system, the key to this acquisition was the excellent relationship Miller and CCR has with Dell that allowed for the acquisition of a machine with a large number of fast processors, but also one with an extremely fast communication backbone to allow the processors to exchange information much faster than is typical on such machines. It is also mentioned that such a machine will serve as a magnet to attract top faculty and student candidates who are interested in areas such as computational science and engineering, which relies on simulation of modeling of real world phenomena.
• November 20: University at Buffalo adds second Dell Cluster to track Great Lakes pollution and fuel general research, as reported in this article from UB News Services.
• November 20: An article from the Houston Chronicle reports on the recent addition of a Dell Cluster at the Center for Computational Research.
• November 19: The Wall Street Journal article "IBM Computer Will Outpace Japanese Rival" mentions the State University of New York at Buffalo as housing a Dell Cluster among the 25 fastest supercomputers worldwide.
• November 15: CCR's Dell Cluster Achieves 70% of Peak (2.0TF) on LINPACK BENCHMARK. Read the news release here.
• November 14: CCR's 20 tiled-display wall is now installed and displaying high-resolution imagery and animation. Read the announcement here.
• November 14: CCR's large-scale Access Grid Node is now participating in sessions with over 150 AGN sites worldwide, read the announcement here.
• November 14: The blueprint for the University at Buffalo's Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics is discussed, as well as its purpose in the article "Medical center blueprint unveiled" from the Buffalo News.
• November 12: An article entitled "Who's Alpha Now? IBM In, HP Out" from Bio-IT World talks about Dell's large Linux cluster at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
• November 7: Tom Smith's week-long coverage of Open-Source coding for theOpenEnterprise.com concludes with the article "Five Lessons On Open-Source Development, Administration".
• November 7: An article "Grant Recipients Recognized" appears in the Reporter that lists Dr. Russ Miller as one of the top 100 faculty members on campus in terms of funding. The article describes the reception to honor the recipients.
• November 4: theOpenEnterprise.com website contains an interview with CCR's Director, Russ Miller, entitled "Supercomputer Center's Director Details Value of Open Source".
• November 4: theOpenEnterprise.com website continues the day spent with Senior Programmer Analyst, Jason Rappleye, along with CCR's Director, Russ Miller, in Part 2 of the article "A Day In The Life Of An Open-Source Systems Administrator".

• October 21: With $2 Million Grant, Principal Investigator Dr. Russ Miller and a team from UB and Hauptman-Woodard launch a "Transparent" Virtual Community for Protein Structure determination. The software package being developed will have a self-improvement capability as reported in the article "Scientists' Launching a Transparent Virtual Grid Community" found on the Gridtoday website. The article states that with a $2 Million Grant, a team lead by Dr. Russ Miller will launch a "Transparent" virtual community for protein structure determination. The initial prototype will be based on the software package that Miller and his colleagues at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute have previously developed. The concept of a virtual community, where like-minded individuals share their knowledge for the benefit of all who participate, might appear out-of-step with the culture of research scientists, who traditionally have guarded jealously their data from rival groups until publication. However, Miller and his colleagues have been awarded a highly competitive, $2 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant to do just that and more over the next four years. This project is designed to use new technologies, such as grid computing, data mining and collaborative environments, to enhance protein-structure determination, a key tool in the rational drug-design process. The article goes on to describe the Shake-and-Bake (SnB) software package, developed by members of this research team. When the program first became available in 1995, SnB itself represented a quantum leap in structure determination, allowing researchers to solve structures with virtually no input from the user. Last year, the formula on which it was based, developed by Nobel Laureate Herbert Hauptman, president of Hauptman-Woodward, was designated one of "The Top Ten Algorithms of the 20th Century" by Computing in Science & Engineering Magazine. This "black box" approach now is capable of solving the structures of molecules of thousands of non-hydrogen atoms. It also can solve critical substructures that allow for the determination of proteins with tens of thousands of atoms, which only a few years ago would have been regarded as impossible. The article concludes with numerous remarks from Miller describing the impact SnB has had on the crystallographic community, the impact that grid computing will have on scientists worldwide, and related topics that will be the focus of this project.
• October 11: Led by Dr. Russ Miller, scientists in Buffalo working in the field of protein-structure determination have been awarded a $2 million Information Technology Research grant by the National Science Foundation, according to the article "University Awarded $2 Million NSF Grant for Protein Structure" from the website gridcomputingplanet.com.
• October 10: An article entitled "Faculty, staff honored at convocation" appears in the Reporter. The article mentions that Dr. Russ Miller was named a UB Distinguished Professor.
• October 9: The question: What weighs 80,000 pounds, has two miles of cables, is worth $13 million and never would have happened without the support of Michael Dell and New York politicians such as Sen. Hillary Clinton, Rep. Tom Reynolds, and Gov. George Pataki? is answered in the article "Dell Not 'Buffaloed' by Bioinformatics" from the Bio-ITWorld website.
• October 9: An interview with Michael Dell about his company's first major foray into the life sciences at the University of Buffalo is discussed in the article "Dell's Simple Formula for Life Sciences" found on the Bio-ITWorld website.
• October 8: The State University of New York at Buffalo's Center for Computational Research -- a huge user of Linux and other open-source software -- has rarely made the decision to use open source in support of its users' applications for budget considerations, even in a budget-constrained public university; as reported in the article "Open-Source Cost Is Lower, But That's Not All It Offers" from theopenenterprise.com website.
• October 4: An article, entitled "Four Open Source Lessons From The Trenches" found on theopenenterprise.com website, discusses the use of Open-Source software in the business world, as well as the Center for Computational Research.
• October 3: Principal Investigator Dr. Russ Miller, working with scientists at UB and the Hauptman-Woodward Institute, have been awarded a competitive $2 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant to work on informatics issues associataed with problems in molecular structure determination over the next four years, according to the article "UB team to launch 'transparent' virtual community for protein-structure scientists" from the UB Reporter.
• October 2: More than 20 business people from the Dublin Chamber of Commerce will be in Buffalo Sunday and Monday on its first ever trade mission into upstate New York as stated in the article "Ireland Chamber of Commerce to open local office" from the Buffalo News.
• October 1: Russ Miller, Ph.D, the director of the Center for Computational Research, will be a guest speaker at a summit hosted by SGI and Delaware Biotechnology Institute, as stated in the press release "SGI and Delaware Biotechnology Institute Summit Examines Technology's Impact on Bioterrorism and Drug Discovery" on the SGI website.

• September 30: The federal government is awarding Principal Investigator Dr. Russ Miller and a team of scientists from UB and the Hauptman-Woodward Institute a $2 million research grant that will boost efforts to use new technologies in protein-structure determination as reported in the article "Inside UB" from the Buffalo News.
• September 14: Buffalo, already the biggest beneficiary of the state's $1 billion investment in biotechnology research, will be eligible for more spending under a new, $225 million program that's in the works, the head of the state's science sponsorship reported in the article "More Funds for Buffalo" from the Buffalo News.
• September 9: Western New York's brightest hope for an economically vibrant future got another boost, along with some "star power," with the recent installation of a new supercomputer cluster, according to article "Hey, dude, we got a Dell" in the Buffalo News.
• September 6: Topics in bioinformatics will be discussed at a local medical conference, as reported in the article "City hosts medical conference" in the Buffalo News.
• September 3: Dell founder Michael Dell was at UB to unveil one of the largest Linux clusters at an academic institution, more than 2000 Dell PowerEdge servers, for human genome research, as stated in the press release "More Than 2,000 Dell Servers to be Used for Advanced Research at The University at Buffalo" on the Dell Computer Corp. web site. News of this event was covered by various media services: