Innovation through Collaboration: Pervasive Technology Institute

Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) at Indiana University is a world-class organization dedicated to the development and delivery of innovative information technology to advance research, education, industry, and society.  Supported by a $15 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., bas funding from Indiana Unviersity, and a wide variety of grants from federal funding agencies, PTI is built upon the philosophy of “innovation through collaboration.” PTI brings together faculty from the School of Informatics and Computing, Maurer School of Law, IUB College of Arts and Sciences, Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and University Information Technology Services at Indiana University. In proposing the creation of the Pervasive Technology Institute, IU President Michael A. McRobbie wrote,

"Creating the Pervasive Technology Institute is the logical next step to securing our position of leadership in the information technology field and will serve as a catalyst to our efforts to expand all of our research enterprises within the university and state. It will build on nearly a decade of outstanding applied research work in information technology and on IU's highly advanced IT infrastructure, much of it initially funded by the Lilly Endowment. We are deeply grateful to the Lilly Endowment for this grant -- and for its extraordinary continuing support of so many aspects of the research and education mission at Indiana University."  

PTI activities span the entire spectrum of “research, develop, deliver, and support” in information technology, informatics, and computer science. PTI is a collaborative organization made up of Research Centers and Service and Cyberinfrastructure Centers that are affiliated with PTI and one or more other organizations at IU. These centers include Research Centers and Service and Cyberinfrastructure Centers, as follows:

• PTI-affiliated Research Centers

  • The Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research (CACR) leads the creation of IT security policy, security monitoring tools and secure applications in critical areas of cyberinfrastructure, including personalized health. CACR is affiliated with PTI, the Maurer School of Law, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and University Information Technology Services.

  • The Center for Research in Extreme Scale Technologies (CREST) develops new technologies for high-capability graph computing systems and applications (that is, computing problems based on graph data structures) and exascale computing environments. CREST is affiliated with PTI, the School of Informatics and Computing, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and University Information Technology Services.

  • The Digital Science Center (DSC) creates intuitively usable cyberinfrastructure with tremendous capabilities for supporting collaboration and computation. DSC is affiliated with PTI, the School of Informatics and Computing, and the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology.

  • The Data to Insight Center creates new tools to understand and gain insight from the vast quantities of data now produced in digital form now and in the future. D2I is is affiliated with PTI, the School of Informatics and Computing, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and University Information Technology Services.

• PTI-affiliated Service and Cyberinfrastructure Centers

  • The Research Technologies Division of UITS develop, deploys, delivers, and supports research cyberinfrastructure for IU scholars and scholars throughout the United States. Research Technologies is affiliated with PTI, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and University Information Technology Services.

  • The National Center for Genome Analysis Support (NCGAS) deploys and supports software for analysis of genomes particularly genome assembly from next-generation sequence data. NCGAS is affiliated with PTI, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, University Information Technology Services, and the IUB Department of Biology (College of Arts and Sciences)