USA Today
Baton Rouge (AP) - An astrophysicist will lead a center at Louisiana State University that will try to wring big economic benefits from a supercomputer.
Ed Seidel earned a doctorate from Yale University after - his own admission - a bit too much partying and a disdain for cracking the books during his first stint at the College of William and Mary.
"Suddenly you realize you can't pass the next test; that kind of thing happened to me," Seidel said Thursday. "I was into having fun."
He got serious after taking a break from school to work at a hotel in Switzerland.
LSU lured Seidel away from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, with the opportunity to chart the future of the Center for Applied Information Technology and Learning.
With strong backing from Gov. Mike Foster, the center already has attracted more than $22 million in state money. Officially created two years ago, the center now employs about 10 professors and, in time, will feature at least 30.
"We're handing it to him and betting on him as the horse who's going to do the trick for the state," said Joel Tohline, an astrophysicist who has been the center's interim director.
LSU officials said they competed directly with Cal tech and Ohio State universities in landing Seidel, who will be paid $153,750 annually and supported by a host of professors and graduate assistants.
Seidel said he was attracted by Louisiana's funding support for technology research and by the presence at LSU of SuperMike, a $2.8 million supercomputer that ranks among the fastest in the world.
A scholar of wide-ranging interests, Seidel is known for studying black holes, using powerful computers to solve Albert Einstein's equations and for advancing a field called grid computing that lets researchers in far-flung sited use computing networks to solve problems of common interest.
Chancellor Mark Emmert said Seidel's hiring and the move toward full development of a technology research center will signal determination by LSU to join the ranks of the nation's top research institutions.
Seidel said the computer may be programmed to provide almost immediate findings that can assist oil rig crews on platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, eye doctors preparing for an operation in New Orleans or emergency response officials across the Gulf south who want a precise reading on a hurricane's path.
Scholars attracted to the center may wind up forming companies of their own that create jobs, and state-backed research will help LSU land far larger federal research grants, officials said.
Publish Date:
08-29-2003
