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People: Faculty Profile
Daniel E. Atkins Kellogg Professor of Community Information
BS in electrical engineering, Bucknell University; MSEE, Ph.D. in computer science, University of Illinois
(734) 647-7312
| 301B West Hall
E-mail: atkins@umich.edu
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Classes taught
| Specialization(s): LIS
Daniel E. Atkins is the Kellogg Professor of Community Information in the School of Information and is a professor in the Division of Computer Science and Engineering in the College of Engineering. He is also coordinator of the Community Informatics specialization within the SI Master of Science in Information program.
Atkins also serves part-time as U-M associate vice president for research, cyberinfrastructure, a position which reports to the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Office of the Provost.
From June 1, 2006 to June 30, 2008, he served as director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., while on leave from 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). He chaired the committee at Michigan that developed one of the earliest computer engineering undergraduate degree programs. His doctoral students from this era have all gone on to positions of leadership in academia.
In 1982 Atkins became associate dean for research and graduate programs for the U-M College of Engineering during a period of rapid rejuvenation, working together with James Duderstadt (president emeritus, University of Michigan) and Charles Vest (president emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Atkins assisted in many aspects of this rejuvenation, but was specifically responsible for establishing one of the first and leading academic distributed computing environments (the Computer-Aided Engineering Network), and for shifting the research culture to encompass more multi-disciplinary, team-based projects often including industrial collaboration. The college's sponsored research volume more than tripled during this five years. Atkins served as interim dean of engineering for two years.
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.
Atkins has been project director for several large interdisciplinary NSF-sponsored projects to develop principles for the design and evaluation of IT-enabled scientific collaboratories -- "laboratories without walls." These flagship collaboratory projects, including SPARC for atmospheric and space science, also included outreach to middle and high school science education and helped create the conditions for the current cyberinfrastructure/E-science movement. These projects led to the formation of CREW, the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work at the School of Information.
He led workshops to develop the NSF Digital Library Initiative, including joint programs with the European Union, and later became project director of the U-M Digital Library Project. He helped pilot the Mellon Foundation sponsored JSTOR Project now in wide use in academic libraries. These projects laid the foundation for U-M leadership in digital library production activities including the current partnership with Google to digitize eight million volumes.
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. SI has been the leader in defining and creating a new genre of "information school, or I-School," now emerging at many universities.
Atkins also formed and directed an Alliance for Community Technology (ACT) sponsored by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to support the innovative use of information technology in service of broader participation in civil society. Among other things, ACT supported the formation of a Community Information Corp at SI, the creation of a virtual library federation for the U.S. Native American tribal colleges, the acceleration of the adoption of open source software in the nonprofit sector, and provided technical assistance to a variety of community technology centers in developing countries. Atkins also serves as a consultant to Kellogg on the innovative use of information and communication technology for enriching education opportunities for at risk youth in the U.S., and for both rural communities and higher education in southern Africa. He also serves as a consultant to the Hewlett Foundation in the area of open educational resources.
Atkins participates in several strategic activities to better understand and act upon the implications of emergent information technology on the future of knowledge-based institutions and activities. He served as chair of the National Science Foundation Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure. The panel issued a report in February 2003, "Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure," that recommends a major program in cyberinfrastructure-enhanced science and engineering research and allied education for the nation under the leadership of the NSF. This report, now dubbed the "Atkins report," has received international attention and is serving as an important document for strategic planning in academia and research funding agencies.
Atkins also serves regularly on panels of the U.S. National Academies exploring issues such as scholarship in the digital age, the future of scholarly communication, and the impact of information technology on the future of higher education. He is a consultant to the international OECD on similar topics, and to the American Council of Learned Societies on the topic of the impact of cyberinfrastructure on the humanities and social sciences. He is co-author of a recent book, Higher Education in the Digital Age: Technology Issues and Strategies for American Colleges and Universities. He serves as an international consultant and invited speaker for industry, foundations, educational institutions, and government, including, for example, the NSF, the NIH, Kellogg Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, the Coalition for Networked Information, Internet2, the MIT Libraries, NPOWER, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Archives and Records Administration.
Atkins is married to Monica M. Atkins, a retired Spanish and German teacher. They have two children: Thomas, a pediatrician, and Susan, a bilingual teacher, both married and living in Oakland, California.
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