INDIANA UNIVERSITY PURDUE UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS

COMMUNICATIONS & MARKETING Administration Building, Suite 136 355 N. Lansing Street Indianapolis, Indiana 46202-2896 317-274-7711 Fax: 317-274-5457

GROUNDBREAKING CEREMONY BEGINS CONSTRUCTION OF NEW HOME FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH, SERVICES AND ACADEMIC PROGRAMS AT IUPUI

INDIANAPOLIS - IU President Myles Brand, IUPUI Chancellor Gerald Bepko, and Michael McRobbie, IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, today broke ground on a "dream come true."

With symbolic turns of the spade, Brand, Bepko, and McRobbie commenced construction of the Communications Technology Complex (CTC) and Informatics Complex (IC) at Michigan and West Streets in Indianapolis. Projected to cost $39 million, the building is scheduled to be completed in 2003.

"The CTC and IC are very real symbols of Indiana University's commitment to building the information economy in Indiana," McRobbie said. "The CTC will be home for network operations centers for global and national high-speed networks such as the Internet2 Abilene network, cutting-edge research in pervasive computing, and the development and delivery of award-winning IT support services to IUPUI's students, faculty, and staff."

William Plater, executive vice chancellor and dean of the faculties at IUPUI summed up the prospect of the IC portion of the building: "It is a dream come true."

"We began working on a new classroom building to replace the Mary Cable building over 18 years ago," Plater said. "Since then, music technology, journalism, and informatics have all emerged as new academic disciplines. To have a building designed for these exciting new fields - as well as modern, well-designed learning environments and classrooms for all students - is a milestone in IUPUI's emergence as one of the world's great urban universities."

The CTC will be the center of telecommunications for Indiana University, an anchor of the Indianapolis-Bloomington technology corridor, and a hub of the new Indiana Optical Fiber Infrastructure. The complex will be where IU's statewide data, voice, and video networks converge, where they will be managed, and where IU's network will connect to global and national networks.

The CTC will also be the home of the Pervasive Technology Labs based at IUPUI and funded through a grant from the Lilly Endowment.

The IC will be the gateway to IUPUI's academic programs, serving both as the center for new learning environments and classrooms that will benefit all students and as the permanent home for an array of special undergraduate and graduate programs in informatics and new media, journalism and music technology.

Connected with the CTC, the Informatics Complex will give Indiana one of the most advanced sites for pioneering work in a broad range of information technology fields, while enabling students to learn about the latest theoretical developments.

###

Return to IUPUI Home