Michael McRobbie

Michael Alexander McRobbie AO (born October 11, 1950) is an Australian–American computer scientist and university administrator. He became the eighteenth president of Indiana University on July 1, 2007.

Michael McRobbie

AO
18th President of Indiana University
Assumed office
July 1, 2007[1]
Preceded byAdam Herbert
Personal details
Born
Michael Alexander McRobbie

(1950-10-11) October 11, 1950
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
NationalityAustralian, American
Spouse(s)
  • Andrea Shirley Gibson (1973–2003, died)[2]
  • Laurie Burns (2005–present)
Alma materUniversity of Queensland
Australian National University [3]
ProfessionUniversity administrator
Websitepresident.iu.edu
Academic background
ThesisA proof theoretical investigation of relevant and modal logics (1979)
Doctoral advisor
  • Robert K. Meyer
  • Richard Routley
Academic work
DisciplinePhilosophy
Sub-disciplineArtificial intelligence, automated theorem proving
Institutions

On August 14, 2020, McRobbie announced that he plans to retire at the end of June 2021 after 14 years as the head of the university and that a search committee is being formed to find his replacement.[4]

Early life and education

Michael Alexander McRobbie was born on October 11, 1950, in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and grew up in Gold Coast, Queensland.[5] He graduated with a BSc with First Class Honours from the University of Queensland in 1974, and with a PhD from the Australian National University in 1979.[6] His early work was in philosophy, artificial intelligence and automated theorem proving.[7][8]

Career
McRobbie with U.S. Senator Richard Lugar in 2007
McRobbie at the Southwest Central Indiana Region Grant Announcement in 2016

After a postdoctoral fellowship in philosophy, he founded an automated reasoning project, the ANU Centre for Information Science Research and the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Computational Systems.[9]

McRobbie was a 1988 Fulbright Scholar in Computer Science from The Australian National University to the Argonne National Laboratory.[10] From 1990 through 1996 he was a professor at the Australian National University. He had a growing interest in international research collaborations. In 1996 he and Kilnam Chon proposed what became Asia Pacific Advanced Network at a symposium held at Tsukuba, Japan.

In 1997 he became the vice president for information technology at Indiana University.[11] The network operations center for the Abilene Network was established at IU under his direction,[12] and the Pervasive Technology Laboratories were established with a $29.9 million grant from the Lilly Endowment in 1999.[13]

McRobbie was principal investigator of a project sponsored by the US National Science Foundation to connect US and Asian national research and education networks called TransPAC.[14] The state-funded $5.3 million I-Light project connected all campuses of the IU system with fiber optic communications (further expanded in 2010).[15] In 2003 he became the vice president for research of IU. In 2005, the TransPAC2 project was funded as a follow-on to TransPAC.[16] He was chairman of the steering committee for the Indiana Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative (METACyt), which was the largest outside funded project in the history of Indiana University Bloomington.[17]

McRobbie served as interim provost and vice president of academic affairs of the Bloomington campus in 2006.[18] He increased external funding by securing millions of dollars in grants for life science initiatives.[19] On a July 2006 trip through China he established a cooperative research program with Tsinghua University in Beijing.[20]

By September 2006, the then president of Indiana University, Adam Herbert, announced he wanted to leave office before July 2008.[21] On March 1, 2007 McRobbie was selected as IU's 18th president and took office on July 1, 2007.[22] He served on the board of directors for ChaCha (the Indiana-based search engine). Some press were critical of a deal that used IU library staff as "guides", although McRobbie resigned from the board before becoming president of the University.[23][24]

McRobbie has served on the board of trustees for Internet2 since 2009, and was named chair of the board starting in 2012.[25] In 2012 he announced a new supercomputer called Big Red II at IU.[26] Although other universities operate larger computers, by some measures this Cray XK7 was expected to be the largest for use by a single US university and not a consortium or national resource.[27] The original Big Red computer was installed in 2006.[28]

Personal life

While still an undergraduate at the University of Queensland, McRobbie married Brisbane native Andrea Gibson in 1973. They had three children together. She died from brain cancer in 2003.[2] A fellowship was named in her memory.[29]

McRobbie has three children and three stepchildren. His second wife, Laurie Burns McRobbie, was born in Michigan and worked as a technologist for 20 years. Both of them had been widowed before they married in 2005.[30]

Laurie McRobbie was the executive director of member and partner relations for Internet2, and an adjunct faculty member in IU's School of Informatics.[31]

After living in Indiana for 13 years, McRobbie became a US citizen in October 2010 while still retaining his original Australian citizenship.[32][33]

Honors and awards

McRobbie was made a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest honor the state can bestow, in 2007 by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. That same year he received an honorary degree from the University of Queensland. In 2008 he received an honorary degree from Sungkyunkwan University in Korea,[31] and one from the Australian National University in 2010.[9] Also in 2010 he was named an officer of the Order of Australia.[9][34]

gollark: No human could come up with the really optimized biochemistry we use and make it work as well as evolution did, so in that way it's more "intelligent".
gollark: Intelligence is poorly defined, really.
gollark: There are also things like how eyes are somewhat backward, food/water and air use the same pipes, there is no conscious diagnostics capability, the immune system sometimes randomly declares war on body parts it doesn't like, and the head/neck is a ridiculous vulnerability.
gollark: Worrying.
gollark: No.

References
  1. "2009-10 IU Factbook" (PDF). Indiana University (Bloomington, Indiana). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 10, 2010. Retrieved February 20, 2010.
  2. "Obituaries - November 16, 2003". Bloomington Herald-Times. November 16, 2003.
  3. "History of IU Presidents". Archived from the original on December 25, 2009. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  4. "IU President McRobbie to retire next year after 14 years". Chicago Tribune. August 14, 2020.
  5. Lai, Eric (October 15, 2007). "The Grill: Michael McRobbie on how to go from CIO to Indiana U's president". Computer World. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  6. McRobbie, Michael Alexander (1979). A proof theoretical investigation of relevant and modal logics (Ph.D.). Australian National University. OCLC 222143545.
  7. Paul B. Thistlewaite; Michael A. McRobbie; Robert K. Meyer (August 1, 1986). "The KRIPKE automated theorem proving system". 8th International Conference on Automated Deduction. doi:10.1007/3-540-16780-3_147.
  8. Michael A. McRobbie; Nuel D. Belnap Jr (June 1, 1979). "Relevant analytic tableaux". Studia Logica. 38 (2): 187–200. doi:10.1007/BF00370441.
  9. Chubb, Ian (July 16, 2010). "Citation for an Honorary Degree". Australian National University. Missing or empty |url= (help)
  10. Udell, Emilly (March 1, 2007). "IU trustees name McRobbie as 18th university president". Northwest Indiana Times. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  11. "IU provost honored as founder of Asia Pacific Advanced Network". Indiana University. July 27, 2006. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  12. "Abilene Gets 10-Gig Upgrade". Light Reading. February 17, 2003. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  13. "Pervasive Technology Labs at Indiana University achieve economic development milestone". Indiana University. June 19, 2013. Archived from the original on December 28, 2012. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  14. "TransPAC Annual Report 2001–2002" (PDF). March 27, 2003. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  15. "$25.1M federal stimulus grant to connect Ivy Tech campuses to I-Light network". February 19, 2010. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  16. "International TransPAC2 Inaugurated". HPCwire. April 8, 2005. Archived from the original on June 20, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  17. "METACyt Initiative Retrospective" (PDF). March 4, 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 28, 2012. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  18. Hupp, Staci (February 28, 2007). "IU provost to succeed Herbert". The Indianapolis Star. Archived from the original on March 3, 2007. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  19. "IU Fact Book 2008-09" (PDF). Indiana University. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 10, 2009. Retrieved May 31, 2009.
  20. "IU Partners With University in Beijing to Enhance Internet". Inside Indiana Business. July 10, 2013. Archived from the original on July 14, 2006. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  21. "Presidential Search". Indiana University. Archived from the original on September 7, 2006. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  22. "IU Trustees select Michael A. McRobbie as 18th president". Indiana University. March 1, 2007. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  23. Faulker, Tim (October 12, 2007). "Indiana University and ChaCha's Scott Jones have same idea". Gawker. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  24. Hinnefeld, Steve (August 9, 2007). "McRobbie under fire for ties to ChaCha University officials dismiss as clerical error discrepancy in when IU president left company's board of directors". Bloomington Herald-Times. Archived from the original on June 20, 2013. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  25. "IU President Michael McRobbie to Become Chairman of Internet2 Board". Indiana University. August 11, 2011. Archived from the original on August 16, 2011. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  26. Leonard, Mike (October 10, 2012). "McRobbie announces new supercomputer, tuition deal for IU". Bloomington Herald-Times.
  27. Hachman, Mark (April 29, 2013). "Indiana U. Inaugurates Most Powerful U.S. University Supercomputer". Slash Dot. Archived from the original on May 3, 2013. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  28. Morgan, Timothy Prickett (October 10, 2012). "Hoosiers to get the world's fastest academic super: Alley-oop for privately paid for petaflops". The Register. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  29. "Andrea S. McRobbie Fellowship in Medieval History". Indiana University.
  30. Andrews, Elisabeth (February 2012). "20 Questions for IU's President" (PDF). Bloomington Magazine. Retrieved June 18, 2013.
  31. "Biography". Office of the President web site. Indiana University. Retrieved June 17, 2013.
  32. "IU President McRobbie becomes U.S. citizen". Kokomo Perspective. October 12, 2010. Retrieved June 19, 2013.
  33. Troop, Don (October 10, 2010). "No Lingering Questions About This President's Citizenship". Chronicle of Higher Education.
  34. "2010 Officer (AO) in the general division of the order of Australia" (PDF). Governor-General of Australia. 2010. p. 9.
Academic offices
Preceded by
Adam Herbert		 President of Indiana University
July 1, 2007 — present		 Succeeded by
Incumbent
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