Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) was launched in 2004 as a collaboration involving the State of North Carolina, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), Duke University, and North Carolina State University. RENCI is organizationally structured as a research institute within UNC-CH, and its main campus is located in Chapel Hill, NC, a few miles from the UNC-CH campus. RENCI has engagement centers at UNC-CH, Duke University (Durham), and North Carolina State University (Raleigh).
RENCI's founding director was Daniel A. Reed; Stanley C. Ahalt is the current director. RENCI employs over 80 staff members.
Mission statement
RENCI's current mission is: "to develop and deploy advanced technologies to enable research discoveries and practical innovations." RENCI achieves its mission by partnering with academic researchers, governmental policy makers, and industry leaders to engage in research and development aimed at solving critical challenges in several focus areas: data science and cyberinfrastructure; environmental sciences; and biomedical and health sciences.
History
RENCI was founded in January 2004 by Daniel A. Reed, PhD, with funding from the State of North Carolina, UNC-CH, North Carolina State University, and Duke University. Dr. Reed formerly served as director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), Chief Architect for the National Science Foundation (NSF) TeraGrid initiative, and Member of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. In May 2004, Alan Blatecky joined RENCI as deputy director. Mr. Blatecky formerly served as executive director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and head of the NSF Middleware initiative.
RENCI's initial mission statement was: to serve as a multidisciplinary institute bridging academe, commerce and society to enrich and empower human potential, create multi-institutional partnerships, and develop and deploy world-leading computational infrastructure.
In December 2005, RENCI received $5.9M in funding from the State of North Carolina for FY2005-2006 and $11.8M in recurring funds for "staff support, computer operations and equipment." This funding was critical for RENCI as it developed a statewide infrastructure to create a virtual organization and leverage that infrastructure and the expertise of RENCI staff in order to engage in federally funded projects of interest to the State. RENCI's initial focus was on applying cyber technologies and advanced analytics to coastal disaster planning, mitigation, and response. RENCI has since engaged in diverse partnerships throughout North Carolina and across the nation. Those partnerships have yielded numerous federal grant awards, thus providing the organization with an additional revenue stream.
RENCI underwent a change in leadership in 2007, with the departure of Dr. Reed and the appointment of Mr. Blatecky as interim director. RENCI implemented its first ever strategic planning process during this time. The process led to a revised mission statement: The Renaissance Computing Institute, a multi-institutional organization, brings together multidisciplinary experts and advanced technological capabilities to address pressing research issues and to find solutions to complex problems that affect the quality of life in North Carolina, our nation and the world.
In 2009, Stanley C. Ahalt, PhD, was appointed to the position of director. Dr. Ahalt previously served as executive director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) and was a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ohio State University (OSU). Upon arriving at RENCI, Dr. Ahalt received a joint appointment as professor in the department of computer science at UNC-CH.
Ashok Krishnamurthy, PhD, was appointed as deputy director in February 2013. Dr. Krishnamurthy was previously the director of research and scientific development at OSC and associate professor in the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering at OSU.