Tom DeFanti Awarded Innovations in Networking Award for Outstanding Individual Contributions
March 9, 2017 / By Lee Ann Weber
Berkeley, Calif. & La Mirada, Calif. — In recognition of his work to develop next-generation networks, advance the mission of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California San Diego, and shape collaborations across organizations, CENIC recognizes Calit2 Director of Visualization Tom DeFanti as the recipient of the 2017 Innovations in Networking Award for Outstanding Individual Contributions.
Maxine Brown has worked with Tom DeFanti since 1977, and is now Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which Tom co-founded with art professor Dan Sandin in 1973. Maxine recalls that, “Advanced networking was an obvious extension of Tom’s passion for real-time interactive computer graphics, with emphasis on ‘real time,’ whether images and animations are viewed locally or over distance.”
Tom’s interest in networking began when SIGGRAPH, the world’s largest, most influential annual conference and exhibition in computer graphics and interactive techniques, was held in Chicago in 1992. In partnership with Larry Smarr, then at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Rick Stevens of Argonne National Laboratory, Tom’s work enabled researchers to connect supercomputers and instruments back home and virtually bring their laboratories to the conference site.
"I got into this field because I wanted to create 3D telephone booths," says DeFanti, "but it took so long that no one knows what a telephone booth is now. What I wanted was for people to be able to walk into a room and be transported anywhere, and to share that with a lot of people. That took a lot of networking capabilities."
In 1995, Tom, Larry, and Rick organized the first IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SC) I-WAY event, interconnecting Federal agency advanced networks and enabling 60 distributed, high-performance computing and visualization projects throughout the U.S. to be showcased at the conference site in San Diego. The National Science Foundation (NSF) noticed, and Steve Goldstein, NSF Program Director for Interagency and International Networking Coordination, contacted Tom to do the same for international advanced networks, saying that Tom, as a user of networks, would make sure these networks not only interconnected, but interoperated as well.
In partnership with Joe Mambretti, who had created the Metropolitan Research and Education Network in Chicago, Tom spearheaded the NSF STAR TAP international connection point, which has evolved into today’s StarLight. “Over the past 25 years, Tom continues to push the limits of big networks, as big resolution instruments, sensors, and simulations generate big visualization and virtual-reality data that scientists want to access, display, and share on big displays,” said Mambretti, Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University.
With his work in visualization and virtual reality technologies recognized around the world, Tom was instrumental in developing the new Media Arts Wing at Calit2. One of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world, the high-end visualization and virtual reality experiments conducted in this facility engage students, researchers, and faculty members and provide a real sense of what the future can hold.
"Tom has been one of my closest collaborators for three decades. He was a driver of the innovation at NCSA and Calit2 in virtual reality, scalable visualization, green IT, and optical networking," said Larry Smarr, Founding Director of Calit2 and Harry E. Gruber Professor of Computer Science, UC San Diego.
From his work with GreenLight Instruments, enabling scientists from diverse disciplines to measure and then minimize energy consumption, to his work with National Lambda Rail, a 12,000-mile high-speed national network infrastructure owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community, Tom’s contributions to the development of next-generation networks and applications to advance science have been profound.
Innovations in Networking Awards are presented each year by CENIC to highlight the exemplary innovations that leverage ultra-high bandwidth networking, particularly where those innovations have the potential to transform the ways in which instruction and research are conducted or where they further the deployment of broadband in underserved areas.
Innovations in Networking Awards are presented each year by CENIC to highlight the exemplary innovations that leverage ultra-high bandwidth networking, particularly where those innovations have the potential to transform the ways in which instruction and research are conducted or where they further the deployment of broadband in underserved areas.
Says DeFanti: "It's nice to be recognized by all the people who have sent me 60 gigs of email over the years."
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Media Contacts
Lee Ann Weber, CENIC
lweber@cenic.org
Tiffany Fox
(858) 246-0353
tfox@ucsd.edu