Ganesan Ravishanker
	Associate Vice President for Information Technology Information Technology Services Wesleyan University Exley Science Center 265 Church St Middletown, CT 06459	Phone: (860) 685-2104 Fax: (860) 685-2951 E-mail: ravishan@wesleyan.edu	Links Wesleyan University ITS My Tamil Movie Songs Blog

Associate Vice President for Information Technology, ITS, Wesleyan University, June 2006 -

I have been recently promoted to this role. As the CIO of Wesleyan, I will have the overall responsibility for for Information Technology Services. I will be working with the ITS staff to carry out our mission - "The mission of ITS is to support the Wesleyan community in its use of information technology for teaching, research and administration."

Director, Technology Support Services, ITS, Wesleyan University, Sep. 1995 - May 2006

In this role I was responsible for overall management of technology infrastructure of the University including research & development and recommending future direction. I manage several groups currently at ITS: Systems and Operations, Telecommunications, Digitization, Network Infrastructure Management, Web Management, and Application Development. I also direct the Electronic Portfolio project. My group is also responsible for the maintenance of CTW (Conn College, Trinity and Wesleyan) library consortium systems. I also was responsible for the User services, Computer Store and Service Center, Helpdesk and Training during the first 5 years.

• Managed several major transitions – VAX/VMS to Unix; Solaris to Linux; PMDF to sendmail;
• Managed and co-authored several systems – WesMaps (online curriculum), Electronic Portfolio, RSS Channel Manager, Events Calendar, Online Course Registration, many applications that run under Electronic Portfolio and Wesleyan’s Single Signon called WesVal.
• Managed major network infrastructure transitions – from hubs to 10 Mb switches to 100 Mb switches; implementation of Cable modems in 200 undergraduate houses; wireless; VLAN reorganization; connection to Connecticut Education Network and I2;
• Manage Telecommunication projects – witnessed the steep decline in landline take rates and telecom revenues and through aggressive vendor negotiations brought down costs; implemented cell coverage inside new buildings where there was no coverage due to the environment friendly windows;
• Managed TSM (Tivoli Storage Manager) backup solution project – totally automated and hands free backup solution for not only servers but also for faculty and staff desktops; wrote the interface to pull critical data from TSM backup for use by support staff;
• Managed the Active Directory project – transition to a single source for user information; Vintela Authentication services for single password;
• Planning Disaster Recovery – second backup tape silo in a different location on campus for servers; failover WWW server in Trinity’s network; Satellite Data Center;

Manager of Scientific Computing, Wesleyan University, 1991-1995

In this role, I was responsible for supporting the scientific computing needs of the University. I was responsible for the design, implementation and support of over 30 Unix workstations and servers in the Chemistry, Astronomy, Mathematics and Computer Science departments. I helped Physics and E&ES departments design their Unix environment. The combined power and resources of the Unix infrastructure was more than the central computing resources. I managed the support structure through department-designated system managers. I also helped implement and support a computer science computing lab of 25 X-terminals served by a dual processor SPARCServer 1000. As the only ITS staff member knowledgeable in Unix, I provided the support for any Unix activity on campus.

Manager of Computer Graphics, Wesleyan University, 1986-1991

In this role, I helped develop CHEMNet, a local area network in the Chemistry department for performing resource intensive molecular modeling calculation and visualization. A state-of-the-art molecular modeling facility consisting of three MicroVaxen (One with an array processor for parallel computing), Evans and Sutherland PS330 graphics workstation, the first Cisco terminal server on campus and over 1 GB disk constituted the facility in 1987. I was a co-investigator in the original NSF proposal for internet access, which provided funding  for Wesleyan to join the Internet. I helped establish the supercomputer access for research groups in the Chemistry department at Pittsburgh and San Diego supercomputing centers. I also was a part of the system management team at the Wesleyan Computing Center and authored several networking software.

Research/Teaching Experience

Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, Wesleyan University, 1991-present

My area of expertise is in the molecular dynamics (MD) and Monte Carlo (MC) methodologies applied to large biomolecular systems such as DNA, protein and protein-DNA complexes. I collaborate with Professor David Beveridge's group in the Chemistry Department. I rewrote WESDYN, a locally developed MD software to conform to modern programming practices. I also developed a parallelized Network Linda version of WESDYN in collaboration with Scientific Computing Associates in New Haven, CT. This software distributed the computing amongst several networked Unix workstations.

I am the author of MDToolchest Version 2.0, a software suite consisting of over 60 graphical analysis tools used to analyze gigabytes of data produced by typical MD or MC simulations. It is being used by over 50 research labs all over the world. I directed the development and am a co-author of a graphics package called WesGraph used for very large data visualization using graphical data structures usually not available in commonly used packages. WesGraph will be placed in the public domain in August 1996.

I taught a course on Molecular Modeling.

Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, Wesleyan University, 1988-1991

I participated in several collaborative research studies with Prof. David Beveridge's group on the MD and MC on DNA. I was the author of MD Toolchest version 1.0.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer Science,  Hunter College of City University of New York (CUNY), 1984-1986

I taught two undergraduate courses in computer science every semester. The courses I taught include Compilers, Data Structures and Computer Graphics.

Research Associate, Hunter College of CUNY, 1984-1986

I performed research in the area of MC and MD of DNA in Prof. David Beveridge's group.

Education

Ph.D. in Chemistry, City University of New York, 1978-1984. Thesis title: "Computer Simulation Studies of the Hydrophobic Effect". Thesis advisor: Professor David L. Beveridge.

M.A. in Computer Science, Queens College of CUNY, 1982-1984. Thesis title: "Variance Reduction in Computer Networks".

M.Sc. in Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, 1976-1978. Thesis title: "Vibrational Spectrum of Biuret". Thesis advisor: Professor Surjit Singh.

B.Sc. in Chemistry, SRKMV Arts College, Coimbatore, India, 1973-1976.

Professional Activities

Member, SBIR Study Section at NIH, 1993-2001

As one of the primary reviewers for molecular modeling related grant proposals, I wrote reviews and recommendations for between 3 and 12 proposals for each of the two meetings every year. The amount of grant ranged from $75,000 for six months (Phase I) to $750,000 for three years (Phase II).

Member, Molecular Graphics Society, 1988-2000.

Member, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1992-2000.

Member, American Chemical Society, 1990-2000.

Grants Received

NECUSE Grant, Feb. 1993 - Dec. 1994. "Development of Molecular Modeling Curriculum using HyperChem". Co-PI: Prof. Paul  Dobosh, Mt. Holyoke College. Amount: $18,900 to Wesleyan.

Shannon Award, NIH, Jul. 1992 - Jun. 1994. "A Biomolecular Dynamics Analysis Toolchest", Co-PI with Prof. David Beveridge. Amount: $100,000.

NIH Grant, DRR R03-RR06039-01, Mar. 1990 - Feb. 1991. "Macromolecular Modeling on the Prophet System". Amount: $42,675.

Community Activities

Middletown Technology Committee, 2004 – present. Managed the Middletown Wi-Fi project by negotiating with the vendors (Cisco, SBC and others) and designing a free access wireless network in Main Street.

Connecticut Valley Hindu Temple Society, 2000-2005. I was a member of the Publications and Communications group and was responsible for the maintenance of the Temple’s website – http://www.cvhts.org. I was also responsible for sending emails about the temple events and produced and distributed the temple’s magazine Nivedan.

Connecticut Tamil Sangam, 1999-2003. I was the Secretary and then the Vice President of the Sangam whose mission was to promote the Tamil culture and increase the awareness of the Tamil culture to our youth. I was instrumental in bringing the use of technology to accomplish this mission and helped maintain a website (http://www.cttamilsangam.org) , as well as increase communication through a mailing list .Also helped organize many cultural events.

Haddam-Killingworth School District Technology Committee – 2000-2001.

Haddam-Killingworth School District Math Curriculum Committee – 1999-2000.