News Article

iUTAH held its third All-Hands meeting of the year on Friday, November 4, 2016, at the Courtyard Marriott in Provo, UT. The conference attracted nearly 70 participants who came together to discuss the “Focus on Facilities” theme, in hopes of inspiring initiatives and grant writing opportunities for research, training, education, and outreach as we move into iUTAH 2.0. Participants at the meeting shared their progress as our facilities were highlighted as catalysts for the next generation of iUTAH collaborative, multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research.

The opening welcome and conference overview was given by iUTAH Project Director Michelle Baker where she reviewed project goals and strategies for sustainability of the program. She also introduced GAMUT, GIRF, Visualization Lab (iVL), and Cyberinfrastructure as facilities that would be explored in more detail throughout the day.

Presenters at the meeting included Jeff Horsburgh, Taya Carothers, Amber Jones, Dave Eiriksson, Christine Pomeroy, Pratibha Sapkota, Martin Buchert, and Melissa Haeffner, all with iUTAH. Students Tony Melcher, Utah State University, and Treven Edwards, University of Utah, presented on research they had done with iUTAH Mentors. The final presentation of the day given by Laura Hanson of the Jordan River Commission, and was titled “How an Inventory of Open Space along the Jordan River Corridor is Assisting Regional Land Use, Conservation, and Natural Resource Management Planning.” It highlighted the successful collaboration between her organization and the iVL group in the development of models.

“The meeting was a wonderful example of people having moved past the point of getting to know each other,” said University of Utah professor and State Program Director of EPSCoR Paul Brooks.  “Now it was almost difficult to get through the program because there were so many just incredibly important, engaging conversations about the future, about accomplishments, about look what we’ve done, and looking to what we could do.”

In addition to presentations, participants also had ample opportunity to connect in networking sessions with other collaborators from across the state. Some presentations can be found on our website in pdf form:

Cyberinfrastructure and HydroShare 
—Dr. Jeffery Horsburgh, iUTAH Cyberinfrastructure Co-lead, Utah State University

GAMUT: The Final Frontier
—Amber Jones, iUTAH Data Manager, Utah State University

Research Activities and Opportunities at the iUTAH Green Infrastructure Research Facility (GIRF)
—Dr. Christine Pomeroy, iUTAH RFA2 Co-lead, University of Utah

The 2017 iUTAH Spring All-Hands Meeting will take place on Friday, March 31, 2017 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, UT, as part of a larger Broader Impacts in Research Conference hosted in partnership with the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Utah.