Biographical Information

Daniel Atkins

Daniel Atkins is the Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. As of June 1, 2006, he is on leave as professor from the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He began his research and teaching career in the area of high-performance computer architecture, and led or participated in the design and construction of seven experimental machines including some of the earliest parallel computers. He developed high-speed arithmetic algorithms now widely used in the computer industry. He did pioneering work in special-purpose architecture, including collaboration with the Mayo Clinic on development of computer-assisted tomography (CAT). In 1982 Atkins became associate dean for research and graduate programs for the U-M College of Engineering, working together with James Duderstadt (president emeritus, University of Michigan) and Charles Vest (president emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As computer and communication systems merged in the early 1980s, Atkins shifted his research and teaching focus from traditional computer architecture to the technical and social architecture of distributed knowledge work environments. He was co-founder of an interdisciplinary research group of social and computer science faculty at U-M who were pioneers in the area of computer-supported cooperative work and related topics in human-computer interaction. Atkins was director of the NSF EXPRES Project that laid the foundation for NSF FASTLANE and contributed to the concept of collaboratories. In 1992 Atkins became the founding dean of the School of Information. This professional graduate school (M.S. and Ph.D.) is committed to learning, research and societal engagement through a combined social-humanistic-technical approach to "bringing people, information and technology together in more valuable ways." Atkins secured $20 million in support from the Kellogg Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Microsoft, Intel, and others to help launch the School and presided over the recruiting of an extraordinary faculty, building a seminal curriculum and research program. In 2002 he served as chair of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. Atkins has a BS in electrical engineering from Bucknell University; and a MSEE, and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois.