Informatics

This meeting will provide a forum for discussing IT support for institutional research missions. The two broad categories of concern include support for research administration and IT support for research activities. Research administration support involves pre- and post-award support, interaction with federal grant systems, regulatory compliance, and intellectual property management. Supporting research activities includes centralized versus decentralized approaches, high-performance computing, advanced networking, and informatics, as well as enabling multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and interinstitutional work.

Engineering Informatics for Bio-Inspired Robots is an NSF-funded project trying to break down barriers to collaboration between engineering and computer science departments. Faculty members participating in the project are teaching the next generation of engineers and computer scientists to produce intelligent design by reaching across disciplines. The goal is to ensure that students are better prepared to tackle the multidisciplinary demands of the engineering and computing industries. As part of the project, participating institutions are leveraging cyberinfrastructure to share expertise, store research results, and advocate for multidisciplinary instruction, demonstrating the power of inter-institutional cooperation for teaching and learning.

The author states that for computer-based data-conversion and data-capture instruments to fullfill their potential colleges and universities must address three broad areas of need.

The Great Plains Network (GPN) is a regional consortium of public universities in seven states: Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. This effective practice is a companion to "GPN: Building the Regional Middleware Infrastructure" (#294). It describes the creation of applications using middleware tools being developed as part of the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI). These tools support collaborative research projects and the sharing of resources in a multi-institutional, virtual organization environment. This report is part of the NMI-EDIT Identity and Access Management Case Study Series.

Since the 1980s, higher education has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on administrative technologies to improve access to information. Institutions implemented new enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, data marts, data warehouses, and technologies to improve reporting. This study analyzes the outcomes at more than 380 higher education institutions. It looks at what the chosen strategies have accomplished, in what ways institutions use the data they collect, whether institutions are investing more resources in tools that enable them to collect and manipulate management information, and the degree to which information and analysis are being used to support institutional decision making. A corporate edition is available here.

These Key Findings describe the major discoveries of the ECAR research study called "Academic Analytics: The Uses of Management Information and Technology in Higher Education". Since the 1980s, higher education has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on administrative technologies to improve access to information. Institutions implemented new enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, data marts, data warehouses, and technologies to improve reporting. This study analyzes the outcomes at more than 380 higher education institutions. It looks at what the chosen strategies have accomplished, in what ways institutions use the data they collect, whether institutions are investing more resources in tools that enable them to collect and manipulate management information, and the degree to which information and analysis are being used to support institutional decision making.

Since the 1980s, higher education has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on administrative technologies to improve access to information. Institutions implemented new enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, data marts, data warehouses, and technologies to improve reporting. This roadmap analyzes the outcomes at more than 380 higher education institutions. It looks at what the chosen strategies have accomplished, in what ways institutions use the data they collect, whether institutions are investing more resources in tools that enable them to collect and manipulate management information, and the degree to which information and analysis are being used to support institutional decision making.

This research bulletin describes the results of a study conducted at the University of California, Santa Barbara, into systems and project requirements for informatics in a broad range of scientific fields (including, but not limited to, bioscience fields), along with requirements in the social sciences and humanities. Faculty were interviewed about what has led them to develop informatics systems in support of their research and what factors are at the forefront as they seek to manage large amounts of research data in a decentralized and collaborative environment. The findings, a mix of the expected and unexpected, have laid the groundwork for new proposals in faculty IT support services.

Bioinformatics applies principles of information sciences and technologies to complex life sciences data. Life sciences research and education are increasingly dependent on bioinformatics and advanced information technologies in order to support their experimental approaches. This research bulletin provides an overview of the opportunities, challenges, and strategies for information technology organizations to optimally facilitate bioinformatics research and broader life sciences development efforts in higher education.