Dr. James (Jim) Wilgenbusch has been named the Director of Research Computing for the Office of the Vice President for Research. Previously, Dr. Wilgenbusch held the position of Senior Associate Director of the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI).
As Director of Research Computing, Jim is responsible for the strategic direction and leadership of the three major computational research areas under the Office of the Vice President for Research: MSI, the University of Minnesota Informatics Institute (UMII), and U-Spatial. In this role he leads University-wide initiatives, partners with collegiate senior administrators and works with faculty and administrators to shape research computing at the University of Minnesota, ensures the excellence of existing activities, and facilitates the implementation of new programs. Jim also maintains research activities in the study and implementation of models, methods and software used in phylogenetic inference and for over 15 years he has been an invited faculty member at workshops and seminars on this same topic.