A festive atmosphere pervaded the Mississippi e-Center @JSU on Tuesday as Jackson State University faculty, staff and administrators celebrated the “kickoff meeting” with members of the Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The gathering, which included a tour of offices, work spaces, classrooms and other facilities at the c-Center, was “to kick off the cooperative research agreement between Jackson State and ERDC,” said Dr. Deborah F. Dent, JSU’s vice president of Information Technology.
Joint areas of research that will be explored include cyber warfare, cyber defense, high-tech computational research and analysis, development of technical measurement involving high-performance computing, energy management and even development of Internet apps, Dent said.
Talks to establish the partnership started about a year and a half ago, said Dr. Reed L. Mosher, director of the Corps’ Vicksburg Information Technology Laboratory. ERDC will work with JSU students and faculty to develop “research recognized nationally,” he said.
“The cyber infrastructure of the building is quite strong,” said Dr. William McHenry, e-Center executive director, who led the tour of the facility. It’s able to handle increased computational power with the very latest in state-of-the-art software and hardware.
“This a really big day for us,” said Dr. James C. Renick, provost and senior vice president for academic and student affairs, creating a partnership that “does so much for this state, this country and beyond.”
“This is a tremendous opportunity for us here at JSU,” said College of Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) Dean Dr. Richard Alo.
Jackson State is assuming a leadership position in the field of computational and data enabled science and engineering, one of the first universities in the nation to offer a doctoral degree in big data.
Recently, Dr. Gordon Skelton was named director of Data Sciences, Engineering and Intelligence, which brings together CSET’s resources in data sciences, engineering and intelligence.
Skelton, who has directed CSET’s Center for Defense Integrated Data located at the Mississippi eCenter at JSU since 2005, was among the scientists at Tuesday’s meeting and gave a talk to the group about JSU’s accomplishments in the field of cyber warfare and cyber defense.
Speaking also were Dr. Khalid Abed, who spoke on computational analysis, and Dr. Shuang Tu, who spoke on solutions to technical issues.