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Australian Michael A. McRobbie (above) will play a central role in building America's New Public University.
He has been named to the new position of university vice president for Information Technology at IU and will move to Bloomington to begin his work in January. He has served as chief executive officer and executive director of the Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) for Advanced Computational Systems in Canberra, Australia, since 1992.
"There is probably no other area of technology that is changing so rapidly with potentially such dramatic consequences as information technology," McRobbie said from his office in Australia. "One of my key tasks will be to ensure that new and innovative information technologies continue to be deployed in timely and creative ways in support of the teaching and research misssion of the university.
"I am also keen to ensure that where possible, IU take a prominent role in new national and international programs in IT."
The CRC are federally funded institutions of scientific excellence in Australia and have collaborative ties with some of the world's leading companies, similar to the National Science Foundation science and engineering centers in this country.
The Centre for Advanced Computational Systems is a collaborative venture between the Australian National University in Canberra, the Division of Information Technology (a commonwealth scientific and industrial research organization) and business participants.
Private corporations collaborating in the enterprise include Digital, Fujitsu and Sun Microsystem, as well as a number of other participants such as Western Mining, one of Australia's largest mining companies.
"The obvious importance to our students and the state of Indiana that IU continue its leadership in technology cannot be overemphasized," said IU President Myles Brand.
"I am extremely pleased that Michael McRobbie, who is internationally acclaimed for his leadership in the field of information technology, has agreed to join the IU team. He will play a central role in our work to build America's New Public University," said Brand.
McRobbie will have responsibility for all aspects of university computing and telecommunications and will report directly to Brand.
He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Queensland (1975) and a doctoral degree from the Australian National University (1979).
Establishing the new vice presidency, McRobbie said, "recognizes how central and important this area is to IU's future."
His 22-year academic career includes more than two decades of research experience in such areas as advanced computing, parallel computing, automated reasoning, computational logic, proof theory and symbolic computation. Since 1987 he has been foundation executive director and a professor (1990) at the Centre for Information Science Research at the Australian National University, in addition to his current responsibilities.