Smarr on board KinteraSan Diego 08 January 2001 Dr. Larry Smarr joined the advisory board of Kintera, an Internet fundraising solutions company for nonprofit organizations.
A recent article (December 10, 2000) in the New York Times announced Dr. Smarr's $300 million of public and private grant awards for establishing the CaliforniaInstitute of Telecommunications and Information Technology, based at both theSan Diego and Irvine campuses of the University of California. The article alsoshared some of his views on the Internet and the opportunities that will arise as a result of the next technological revolution. He explained that the Internetis evolving into a computational fabric which will ultimately be composed of billions of interconnected processors. Dr. Smarr envisions that some day this planetary supercomputer may become self-aware and enhance human actions. "Inessence, we are establishing a virtual community that shares its knowledge and pools its resources to create the computational and information infrastructureof the 21st century that will support the next generation of engineering research," Dr. Smarr stated.
Dr. Smarr's pioneering relationship with the Internet began back in 1983, when he wrote a proposal to the National Science Foundation for a supercomputer forthe University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Then in 1985, he established the National Center for Supercomputer Applications, the organization that latercontributed to the birth of the commercial Internet and the Web browser. In 1993, Dr. Smarr's center launched the first graphics-friendly Web browser named NCSA Mosaic, at a time when there were only a few hundred Web servers around theglobe. In 1997, he was appointed to the President's Information Technology Committee. Later that same year, his hopes for a National Science Alliance became a reality when fifty institutions across the nation joined forces tocreate version one of the National Technology Grid.
Dr. Smarr's robust history with the Internet, his endeavors at the Institute, and his visionary ideas are sure to help guide Kintera in developing theirstrategic plans for the future. With Dr. Smarr on board, Kintera vows to stay onthe cutting edge of knowledge interaction and online interactive fundraisingsolutions for nonprofit organizations.
Dr. Smarr is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of theAmerican Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1990, he received the Franklin Institute's Delmer S. Fahrney Gold Medal for Leadership in Science or Technology.
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