Internet2 Research Engagement Team

Dana Brunson, Executive Director for Research Engagement

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.

Timothy Middelkoop, Senior Research Engagement Engineer

Timothy Middelkoop is a Senior Research Engagement Engineer on the Research Engagement team at Internet2. Tim’s role is in supporting research computing and data professionals along with a variety of other research engagement activities relevant to Internet2. He is currently contributing to the NSF supported MS-CC program and other funded work that we support through Internet2. 

Tim comes to Internet2 after a successful tenure as the director of research computing support services at the University of Missouri, where he was also an assistant teaching professor in the department of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering. He spent 14 years working in academia after receiving his doctorate in industrial engineering and operations research in 2006 from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests include cyberinfrastructure, large-scale (HPC) and multi-core scientific computing, computational optimization, energy management, integrated design systems, and multi-agent systems. 

Tim is an active contributor to Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) efforts and is a part of the leadership team. Tim also participates in the broader research computing and data community (for example Campus Champions) and is a Certified Carpentries Instructor. 

John Hicks, Network Research Engineer

John Hicks is a Network Research Engineer on the Research Engagement team at Internet2.  John is interested in helping researchers and research professionals with cyberinfrastructure(CI)-related topics including campus design, high performance WAN connectivity, high performance data movement, performance monitoring, Information Centric Networking (ICN), and cloud technologies.  He has worked extensively with smaller Colleges and Universities on topics including CI and data management plan development, researcher engagement, and other related CI topics. John is currently focused on developing researcher engagement and information sharing strategies to help bridge the gap between researchers IT needs and related technologies. He also contributes to our work on the NSF-supported MS-CC program. 

John has worked for Internet2 since 2014 in various departments. Prior to that, he spent 20 years as a programer and network engineer at Indiana University. His last position there was with the international networking group. John has spent most of his career supporting scientists, researchers, and RCD professionals using high-performance Research and Education Networks (REN).

Patrick Schmitz, Consultant

Patrick Schmitz is a consultant to the Research Engagement team, supporting strategic planning, communications, and program development (e.g., on CLASS). Patrick is Co-Principal Investigator (with Dana) on 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 RCD Career Arcs working group, and co-coordinating the Strategy and Policy-Facing track of the People Network. 

Schmitz is Founder and Principal Consultant at Semper Cogito, providing Strategic technology consulting in Academic Research IT, Museums, Archives, and Research collections. 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.

Lauren Michael, Consultant

Lauren Michael is a consultant to the Research Engagement team, focused on cyberinfrastructure facilitation for researchers and educators, facilitation-informed campus strategic planning, workforce development, and community building and organizing. As part of her work for Internet2, she continues to serve as a founding leader of multiple efforts powering the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) and CaRCC People Network, having contributed over the years via prior employers and volunteer contributions.

Lauren has long developed practices, teams, and communities around cyberinfrastructure facilitation of researchers, educators, and campuses, and for a variety of organizations and projects including: the Minority Serving – Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (MS-CC), the University of Wisconsin – Madison’s Center for High Throughput Computing (CHTC) and Data Science Hub, the OSG (formerly Open Science Grid), the NSF Partnership to Advance Throughput Computing (PaTh), and the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure – Research and Education Facilitators (ACI-REF) project. Across these activities, Lauren has served as PI or co-PI on seven major institutional or federal agency grants, has consulted with dozens of campuses on their development of cyberinfrastructure funding proposals, and has worked with thousands of educators and researchers.

Daphne McCanse, Consultant

Daphne McCanse is a strategic communications consultant with more than 20 years of experience in communications and marketing related to technology in higher education and research. In addition to her work for Internet2, McCanse serves as Communications and Outreach lead for the Research Computing and Data (RCD) Nexus and Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC). Her past roles include Communications Officer for the Vice President of IT and CIO and Manager of Strategic Initiatives for Pervasive Technology Institute, both at Indiana University. She was co-PI on a National Science Foundation award to support the publication Science Node and has served as communications and organizing chair for numerous conferences and events, including IEEE eScience and CloudCom.