Panelist Bios

Dana Brunson

Dr. Dana Brunson is Executive Director for Research Engagement at Internet2. She is responsible for developing, directing, and executing Internet2’s strategy and active engagement with the national and global communities that support the effective use and development of research cyberinfrastructure. 

Dana is Principal Investigator of the Research Computing and Data Nexus, a National Science Foundation Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence Pilot, and serves in leadership roles in the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC), including co-chairing the RCD Capabilities Model working group and the Logistics operations group. In August 2022, she completed her role as co-manager of the XSEDE Campus Engagement Program which included the Campus Champions. 

From 2019 to 2021, she served on the Trusted CI leadership team and developed and implemented the Trusted CI Fellows Program. Prior to joining Internet2 in January 2019, she was Assistant Vice President for Research Cyberinfrastructure, Director of the Oklahoma State University High Performance Computing Center, and co-lead of the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mathematics from OSU.

James R. Bottum

Jim Bottum is a partner in Omnibond Systems, LLC where he focuses on strategic direction for the company in high end computing, research engagement and partnership opportunities. He is also a Research Professor in the Clemson University Emeritus College.

Over a 40+ year career, Jim has worked as:

  • National Science Foundation Program Officer in the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing 
  • Deputy and later Executive Director at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
  • Inaugural CIO and VPIT at Purdue University 
  • CIO and VPIT at Clemson University

During his career, Jim was the principal investigator and founding director for 2 NSF awards that highlighted the need for and advanced the role of people in supporting research through computational and data intensive tools and technologies. These are: Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Research and Educational Facilitation (ACI-REF) Project (NSF Award #1341935) and the Campus Research Computing Consortium (NSF Award #1620695).

Upon retirement, Jim served as a consultant and advisor to the American Indian Higher Education Consortium and the Minority Serving Cyberinfrastructure Consortium in the establishment and building of foundational Cyberinfrastructure programs to support the constituent campuses.

Henry Neeman

Dr. Henry Neeman is the University of Oklahoma's Executive Director of Research Computing and Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research (OSCER), as well as an Associate Professor of Engineering and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science at OU. 

He received his BS in computer science and his BA in statistics with a minor in mathematics in 1987 from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, his MS in CS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1990 and his PhD in CS from UIUC in 1996. 

Prior to working at OU, Dr. Neeman was a postdoctoral research associate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at UIUC, and before that served as a graduate research assistant both at NCSA and at UIUC's Center for Supercomputing Research & Development. 

In addition to his own teaching and research, Dr. Neeman co-founded and co-leads the OneOklahoma Cyberinfrastructure Initiative, the Research Computing Facilitators Virtual Residency Program, the Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator Training & Development program, the Cyberinfrastructure Leadership Academy, and the Supercomputing in Plain English training program. 

In 2016-22, he served as Joint Co-Manager of the Campus Engagement program of the Extreme Science & Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) program, along with Dr. Dana Brunson, and in 2013-17 he served on the National Science Foundation's Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure.

Patrick Schmitz

Patrick Schmitz is Founder and Principal Consultant at Semper Cogito, providing strategic technology consulting in academic Research IT. 

Schmitz is an active contributor to a number of CaRCC working groups, co-chairs the Research Computing and Data Capabilities Model and RCD Career Arcs working groups, is co-coordinator of the Strategy and Policy-Facing People Network Track, is co-PI for the RCD Nexus, and is a member of the Minority Serving – Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC) Cyberinfrastructure Tiger Team (CITT). 

Prior to this, he spent 12 years at UC Berkeley as Associate Director of Research IT for Architecture and Strategy, providing IT strategy and solutions in support of campus research; and Director of Berkeley Research Computing. 

In addition to his experience in academia, he was a researcher at Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and CWI in Amsterdam, and co-founded a series of tech startups.