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sdyer@theadvocate.com
So far, only two of the five universities involved in the program have used the money to put "big name" researchers on their payrolls.
LSU, which is receiving the biggest special allocation of information technology money, has yet to hire a single researcher.
When the program kicked off last year, LSU used most of its $7 million share on high-tech improvements, such as the SuperMike super computer that's currently ranked the 11th fastest on earth. LSU's allocation from the information technology fund increased to $9 million this year.
Joel Tohline, interim director of the center responsible for LSU's share of the funds, said the initial investment in SuperMike and other technology will help future recruiting efforts.
"If you look at what it takes to actually attract the best people here, there are some major infrastructure issues that we need to address that we can do as one-time expenses while we're out there recruiting faculty and before the dollars are permanently locked up in salaries," Tohline said.
But Tohline said future information technology allocations will be used to recruit top-notch faculty. Tohline said he's using a ballpark figure of $100,000 per faculty member, including fringe benefits.
"If we put, say, 75 percent of that money into faculty, we can hire on the order of 42 new faculty," Tohline said.
Besides the $2.9 million super computer, LSU used $1.8 million of its initial information technology appropriation to improve the campus computer network -- and Tohline said he plans to use another $1.8 million for computer network improvements on the campus this year.
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More personnel at ULL
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Vice President for Research Dwayne Blumberg said his school used most of its $2.9 million in initiative money last year on personnel -- but not on the "big guns" researchers some state officials have talked about.
Blumberg said a large portion of ULL's money was used to hire 10 support personnel for six ongoing research projects with commercial potential.
"We've hired research scientists, post-doctoral assistants and graduate assistants to help out," Blumberg said.
Noting that "hiring takes time," Blumberg said ULL used most of its remaining special info tech allocation for equipment and to enhance the high-tech infrastructure.
"As time goes on and we continue to hire people, we're going to move to the point where the vast majority of the money is invested in people," Blumberg said.
Blumberg said ULL plans to use part of its $3.8 million in information technology funds this year to hire support personnel for two new endowed chairs that were funded from other sources.
Renuka Jindal, a scientist who previously worked at Lucent Technologies, was recently hired as ULL's new electrical engineering chair, and the university is advertising for another new technology-related chair.
"The funding for the chairs themselves was already in place, so we're using the IT money for additional support personnel like research assistants and post-doctoral assistants," Blumberg said.
Blumberg said ULL is also trying to set aside a small portion of the IT funds -- about $800,000 this year -- to enhance a proposed building for its computer science and computer engineering programs.
Southern being cautious
Southern University Center for Energy and Environmental Services Director Michael Stubblefield, who oversees the school's information technology initiative, said most of the $1.2 million received last year was not spent and was carried over to this year.
Stubblefield said Southern is trying not to count its chickens before they hatch and is counting on the information technology funds for only four or five years.
As a result, the school has not used the special IT funds to hire new people at this point, he said.
"The idea is to look at technological infrastructure that we can build that can lead to something greater down the line," he said.
Stubblefield said plans call for Southern to use the money to target three different areas: the College of Business, the College of Engineering and the physics department in the College of Sciences.
The College of Engineering wants more computer capacity, but is not trying to duplicate the SuperMike effort because LSU has offered to make it available to Southern students, Stubblefield said.
"We just opened up a new engineering building on campus, and we're trying to develop a high-tech classroom there," Stubblefield said.
Likewise, the College of Business is developing a high-tech lab for new programs in e-business, he said.
"We should see some tangible things at least by the end of next semester," Stubblefield said.
He also noted that one physics professor plans to use part of the information tech funds in his work with the Livingston Parish-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, which is a high-level scientific installation intended to detect gravitational waves.
La. Tech woos researchers
Of the $1.8 million in information technology received by Louisiana Tech University last year, more than $1 million went into high-tech infrastructure.
"Our focus was on giving real high-speed bandwidth to the major research facilities that we have on our campus," said Les Guice, Louisiana Tech's dean of engineering and science.
"We have to have special things to attract top faculty and students to Louisiana, and this will allow us to do it," Guice said.
A portion of the initial appropriation was also used to help develop Louisiana Tech's Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, said Guice, who also serves as its director.
Guice said he's used a portion of the money to make two major hires -- Box Leangsuksun, a computer scientist from Lucent Technologies, and David Gao, a world-class computational researcher from Virginia Tech who has previous experience at MIT, Harvard, Yale and the University of California at Berkley.
UNO adding faculty
Robert Cashner, the University of New Orleans dean of research and sponsored programs, said his school used its $2.4 million IT allocation last year to purchase high-tech equipment, to develop curricula to train students in information technology and to launch searches for faculty with expertise in new technologies.
"We've actually hired quite a few already," Cashner said.
In all, UNO has hired 14 faculty with its special information technology allocation.
One of UNO's new hires, marine scientist Enrique Reyes, was recruited from LSU.
Another new hire, Abdul Alsamman, was hired from the University of Alabama to anchor UNO's fledgling computer engineering studies.
UNO also hired Sheila Tejada, a computer scientist from the University of Southern California who specializes in robotics.
Two of the new hires are from China -- Jiye Fang, a materials scientist from the University of Singapore, and Weilie Zhou from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Physics.
Three UNO scientists came from Europe -- materials scientist Heike Gabrisch from Berlin's Technical University, physicist Lexzek Maikinski from the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and solid state physicist Leonard Spinu from the University of Paris South.
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