Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced this week that Ira H. Fuchs has been appointed to the newly created position of Vice President for Research in Information Technology, effective July 1, 2000. Mr. Fuchs will lead a wide range of Foundation research initiatives intended to develop new ways in which information technologies (and particularly digital technologies) can benefit scholarship and research, teaching and learning, worldwide.
Mr. Fuchs' initial areas of activity will include:
7 Investigating technical approaches to archiving and providing access to scholarly resources such as JSTOR (an electronic database containing the backfiles of approximately 120 leading scholarly journals).
7 The design and creation of an archive intended to assemble and provide access to "collections" of high quality art images in conjunction with text and associated scholarly materials. Working with others inside and outside the Foundation, Mr. Fuchs will be particularly concerned with the development of user interfaces, database architecture, and advanced search capacities.
7 Other Foundation-sponsored projects in the areas of scholarly communication, the further development of digital libraries, and the cost-effective uses of technology in teaching, including online and distance learning.
Mr. Fuchs has served for six years as a Senior Advisor to the Foundation on a wide range of issues involving information technology. Additionally, he has been JSTOR's Chief Scientist since its inception.
For the last 15 years, Mr. Fuchs has been Princeton University's Vice President for Computing and Information Technology, and he will continue to spend roughly one day a week advising the senior leadership of the University in its use of digital technologies.
Princeton's President Harold T. Shapiro said: "This is a very significant initiative by the Mellon Foundation and an exceptional opportunity for Ira to build on the leadership that he has been providing for more than 20 years in applying information technologies to teaching and research. Ira is a person of exceptional insight and imagination, and this new position will allow him, and the Mellon Foundation, to pursue a broad range of interesting and important questions. As the same time, I am very pleased that Ira will also continue to be a senior technology adviser to me, and I look forward to continuing collaboration between Princeton and the Foundation in this field."
NOTE: For the complete news release on Ira Fuchs' appointment, contact Gretchen Wagner at the Mellon Foundation, (212) 838-8400.
Contact: Gretchen Wagner (212) 838-8400
