Michael A. Grady

Executive Program Officer for Cyberinfrastructure, Office of the Chief Information Officer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Focus on understanding how cyberinfrastructure (CI) can help Illinois researchers advance their research, and then act on that understanding to help campus IT determine how to effectively deliver the CI required. Contact information: m-grady@illinois.edu , (217) 244-1253, 2222 DCL, MC 256, 1304 W. Springfield Ave., Urbana, IL 61801 Resume: resume (2012) with emphasis on cyberinfrastructure efforts; resume (2012) with more emphasis on software development background. Most recent (2011) NSF-style bio NSF-style bio (2009) with more operational experience emphasis

Current areas of focus

• Data, data, data: Data management planning, data stewardship, and data storage have become a focus within the University, and nationally, in the last year or two. NSF requirements around data management plans have been one key driver in this area. I'm involved in several campus groups focused on data stewardship, storage, and planning, as well as regional and national efforts to collaborate on best practices and resources for researchers and institutions. These include being a member of the campus Data Stewardship Committee and its Research Data Initiative, being a co-chair of the campus Data Storage Services Task Force, helping establish data management planning resources and expertise on campus, being an Illinois representative on the CIC Data Storage Work Group. and being part of a multi-instititional partnership that has created a Data Management Plan online tool called the DMP Tool.
• Cyberinfrastructure analysis: Since 2007, have led the efforts of the Office of the Chief Information Officer to understand the changing cyberinfrastructure (CI) needs of campus researchers and how those needs can best be met. This has included working with a number of units on campus, including the University Library, the Office of Sponsored Programs and Research Administration, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, NCSA, GSLIS, and various units and IT staff around the campus. As an early part of this analysis I developed a CI impact analysis rubric for assessing the CI needs of grant proposals, and analyzed quite a few proposals. And a very key activity has been chatting with and interviewing faculty about their research.
• Research Technology Facilitator: Helped conceive of and define this pilot effort to explore a "new campus role combining individual information technology expertise with a broad, socially-connected network of similar IT professionals, in order to help researchers identify and locate the technology services they need." Also part of the steering team guiding this pilot.
• Computational resources and support: Helping refine the Campus Cluster shared computing cluster model for the University of Illinois, including governance models. Also a Campus Champion representative for Illinois.
• Multi-institutional collaborative efforts: Participating in, and in some cases helping to lead, a number of multi-institutional efforts. This includes the CIC Data Storage Work Group and DMP Tool efforts mentioned above. I'm also the co-chair of the CIC Identity Management Group, Illinois's InCommon executive and an administrator, and participate in a variety of Internet2-related efforts.
• Expertise in leveraging federated authentication for research/researcher tools, which has included assisting with using such for MONK and the DMP Tool.

Links

Illinois -- Yahoo -- Google -- Google groups -- Metacrawler -- Dilbert -- xkcd -- CICme