News

On Wednesday, July 5, 2017, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. During this month's scheduled maintenance period, Primary Storage, Mesabi, and Itasca will be unavailable throughout much of the day. Systems status is always available on our Status page. If you have any questions, please email help@msi.umn.edu.
Professor Lian Shen, an MSI PI from the Department of Mechanical Engineering (College of Science and Engineering), has been named the new Director of the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL). Professor Shen has been a member of SAFL since his arrival at the University of Minnesota in 2012. He will assume the directorship on September 1, 2017.
The Bell Museum of Natural History has begun the process of moving its famous dioramas to its new location on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. A story about the move appears on the Fox 9 website: Bell Museum carefully moves from Minneapolis to St. Paul.
MSI PI R. Roger Ruan and a PhD student in his group, Erik Anderson, have developed a process that converts scum, a byproduct of wastewater treatment, into biodiesel. A story about the process appears on the University of Minnesota News site: U of M wastewater treatment pilot promises to turn scum into profit.
MSI PI David Blank has been named to be the Head of the Department of Chemistry. The appointment begins on September 1, 2017. Professor Blank will take over the position from Professor William Tolman, also an MSI PI, who has served as the department head for the past eight years.
MSI PI Bethanie Stadler (professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering) is the Principal Investigator for a project that has received a 2017 Minnesota Futures Grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research.
U-Spatial has named the winners for their 2017 Mapping Prizes. This annual event, which is open to students at the University of Minnesota, honors provocative and innovative map-making. This year’s competition included 51 entries and prizes were awarded to nine maps. See the winners on the U-Spatial website.
On Wednesday, June 7, 2017, MSI staff will perform scheduled maintenance and upgrades to various MSI systems. During this month's scheduled maintenance period, Primary Storage, Mesabi, and Itasca will be unavailable throughout much of the day. June maintenance will include:
MSI PI Andrew Odlyzko (Mathematics) was featured on KARE-11 television recently in a story about Bitcoin, the digital currency. You can see the story on the KARE-11 website: Breaking Down Bitcoin.

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