About Us

Data defines the future of an information society. Without means to find data, archive it, to use it, and convert data to knowledge, the data deluge that society faces today will remain underutilized. The Center for Data and Search Informatics (DSI), was founded in 2006 in the Indiana University School of Informatics to promote cross-disciplinary research and education, and innovation transfer in the multidisciplinary area of large-scale data and search.

The Center, which is physically located in the IU School of Informatics Room 323, is led by Beth Plale.

The industry affilates program associated with DSI is in cooperation with Florida International University and is under the direction of site leaders Dennis Gannon at IU and Napthali Rishe at FIU.

People

DSI Director: Dr. Beth Plale is Associate Dean of Research in the School of Informatics, Director of DSI, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from State University of New York Binghamton with Postdoctoral studies at Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA from LaVerne University. She is the PI or Co-PI on over $7M in active research grants, has organized international panels and workshops, and has been a program committee member on over 20 committees. She was a Visiting Scientist at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland Fall 2004. Dr. Plale was in the software development industry for 7 years prior to returning to academia.

IU Site Director: Dennis Gannon, Indiana University, was chair of the Department of Computer Science at Indiana University during 1997-2004. He is also a founder and Science Director of the Indiana University Pervasive Technologies Lab. His Extreme Lab! at Indiana University is well regarded for producing high quality research-driven software.

Staff Programmer: Felix Terkhorn is the resident software engineer and research technologist at Indiana University's Center for Data and Search Informatics. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from Indiana University, and is currently pursuing his Master's degree in the same field. In the coming months, Felix will be responsible for integrating the full service stack connecting DSI's back-end data facilities to our interactive displays and controls. He currently manages this collection of web pages. Felix also assists with community outreach functions and maintaining general order in the lab.