Laboratory for Internet Computing(LINC)

Laboratory for Internet Computing(LINC) was established in 1997, when its Co-Directors, Henry Chu and Vijay Raghavan, received funding from the State of Louisiana to create a joint research effort with Southern University at Baton Rouge . The name, LINC, and the slogan "Harnessing Distributed Heterogeneous Sources," described its initial research theme. Shortly after, LINC focused on studying the management of information related to Energy and Environmental issues by establishing the Energy and Environmental Information Resources Center (EEIRC) via funding from the DoE. Then came multi-year, multi-million dollars research support from Louisiana Governor's IT Initiative, at the beginning of the 21st century. The development of numerous industry-oriented and innovative tech-entrepreneurship projects, in turn, represented the first steps in establishing the Center for Visual and Decision Informatics (CVDI), an Industry-University Collaborative Research Center sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), in 2009. After three years of struggle and preparation, the LINC co-founders, with strong support from Ramesh Kolluru and Raju Gottumukkala, kicked off CVDI in 2012 (with Drexel University as our partner). Five years later we, now, finally have an NSF award for Phase 2 of CVDI with 5 research sites: four in the U.S. and one in Finland.