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Michael Alexander McRobbie (born October 11, 1950) is an Australian–American computer scientist and university administrator. He served as the 18th
president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
of
Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...
from 2007 to 2021. Upon stepping down from the IU presidency, McRobbie was replaced by Pamela Whitten, who became the 19th president of Indiana University on July 1, 2021. On July 1, 2021, he assumed the titles of university chancellor, president emeritus and university professor. He is the third person to serve as university chancellor in the university's more than 200-year-old history.


Early life and education

McRobbie is an Australian. Born on October 11, 1950, in
Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metrop ...
,
Victoria Victoria most commonly refers to: * Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia * Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada * Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory * Victoria, Seyche ...
, he grew up in
Gold Coast, Queensland The Gold Coast is a coastal city in the state of Queensland, Australia, approximately south-southeast of the centre of the state capital Brisbane. With a population over 600,000, the Gold Coast is the sixth-largest city in Australia, the nati ...
. He graduated with a B.Sc. with First Class Honours from the
University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...
in 1974, and with a Ph.D. from the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
in 1979. His early work was in
philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some s ...
,
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
and
automated theorem proving Automated theorem proving (also known as ATP or automated deduction) is a subfield of automated reasoning and mathematical logic dealing with proving mathematical theorems by computer programs. Automated reasoning over mathematical proof was a m ...
.


Career

After a postdoctoral fellowship in philosophy, he founded an automated reasoning project, the ANU Centre for Information Science Research and the Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Computational Systems. McRobbie was a 198
Fulbright Scholar
in Computer Science fro
The Australian National University
to th
Argonne National Laboratory
From 1990 through 1996 he was a professor at the Australian National University. He had a growing interest in international research collaborations. In 1996 he and Kilnam Chon proposed what became
Asia Pacific Advanced Network The Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) is a not-for-profit association of Asia-Pacific national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Hong Kong as a company limited by guarantee. The organisation was originally formed on 3 Jun ...
at a symposium held at Tsukuba, Japan. In 1997 he became the first vice president for information technology at Indiana University. The
network operations center A network operations center (NOC, pronounced like the word ''knock''), also known as a "network management center", is one or more locations from which network monitoring and control, or network management, is exercised over a computer, teleco ...
for the Abilene Network was established at IU under his direction, and the Pervasive Technology Laboratories were established with a $29.9 million grant from the
Lilly Endowment Lilly Endowment Inc., headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, is one of the world's largest private philanthropic foundations and among the largest endowments in the United States. It was founded in 1937 by Josiah K. (J. K.) Lilly Sr. and his s ...
in 1999. McRobbie was principal investigator of a project sponsored by the US
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
to connect US and Asian
national research and education network A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country. It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backb ...
s called TransPAC. The state-funded $5.3 million I-Light project connected all campuses of the IU system with
fiber optic communication Fiber-optic communication is a method of transmitting information from one place to another by sending pulses of infrared light through an optical fiber. The light is a form of carrier wave that is modulated to carry information. Fiber is pref ...
s (further expanded in 2010). In 2003 he became the vice president for research of IU. In 2005, the TransPAC2 project was funded as a follow-on to TransPAC. He was chairman of the steering committee for the Indiana Metabolomics and Cytomics Initiative (METACyt), which was the largest outside funded project in the history of
Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington, Indiana University, IU, or simply Indiana) is a public research university in Bloomington, Indiana. It is the flagship campus of Indiana University and, with over 40,000 students, its largest campu ...
. McRobbie served as interim provost and vice president of academic affairs of the Bloomington campus in 2006. He increased external funding by securing millions of dollars in grants for life science initiatives. On a July 2006 trip through China he established a cooperative research program with
Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (; abbr. THU) is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. The university is a member of the C9 League, Double First Class University Plan, Project ...
in
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 2 ...
. By September 2006, the then president of Indiana University, Adam Herbert, announced he wanted to leave office before July 2008. On March 1, 2007 McRobbie was selected as IU's 18th
president President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
and took office on July 1, 2007. He served on the board of directors for
ChaCha Cha-Cha, Cha Cha, ChaCha or Chacha may refer to: Music *Cha-cha-cha (dance), a dance of Cuban origin *Cha-cha-cha (music), a genre of Cuban music * ''Cha Cha'' (album), a 1978 album by Herman Brood & His Wild Romance * ''Cha Cha'' (soundtrack), t ...
(the Indiana-based
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
). Some press were critical of a deal that used IU librarians as "guides", although McRobbie resigned from the board before becoming president of the University. McRobbie has served on the board of trustees for
Internet2 Internet2 is a not-for-profit United States computer networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government. The Internet2 consortium administrative headquarters are located in Ann Arbor, M ...
since 2009, and was named chair of the board starting in 2012. In 2012 he announced a new
supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...
called Big Red II at IU. Although other universities operate larger computers, by some measures this
Cray XK7 XK7 is a supercomputing platform, produced by Cray, launched on October 29, 2012. XK7 is the second platform from Cray to use a combination of central processing units ("CPUs") and graphical processing units ("GPUs") for computing; the hybrid arc ...
was expected to be the largest for use by a single US university and not a consortium or national resource. The original Big Red computer was installed in 2006. On August 14, 2020, McRobbie announced that he planned to retire at the end of June 2021 after 14 years as the head of the university and that a search committee was being formed to find his replacement.


Personal life

While still an undergraduate at
The University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...
, McRobbie married Brisbane native Andrea Gibson in 1973. They had three children together. She died from brain cancer in 2003. A fellowship was named in her memory. McRobbie has three children and three stepchildren. His second wife, Laurie Burns McRobbie, was born in
Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
and worked as a technologist for 20 years. Both of them had been widowed before they married in 2005. Laurie McRobbie was the executive director of member and partner relations for Internet2, and an
adjunct faculty An adjunct professor is a type of academic appointment in higher education who does not work at the establishment full-time. The terms of this appointment and the job security of the tenure vary in different parts of the world, however the gener ...
member in IU's School of Informatics. After living in Indiana for 13 years, McRobbie became a US citizen in October 2010 while still retaining his original Australian citizenship.


Honors and awards

McRobbie was made a
Sagamore of the Wabash The Sagamore of the Wabash is an honorary award created by the U.S. state of Indiana during the term of Governor Ralph F. Gates, who served from 1945 to 1949. A tri-state meeting was to be held in Louisville with officials from Indiana, Ohio ...
, the highest honor the state can bestow, in 2007 by
Indiana Governor The governor of Indiana is the head of government of the State of Indiana. The governor is elected to a four-year term and is responsible for overseeing the day-to-day management of the functions of many agencies of the Indiana state governmen ...
Mitch Daniels Mitchell Elias Daniels Jr. (born April 7, 1949) is an American academic administrator, businessman, author, and retired politician. A Republican, Daniels served as the 49th governor of Indiana from 2005 to 2013. Since 2013, Daniels has been p ...
. That same year he received an honorary degree from the
University of Queensland , mottoeng = By means of knowledge and hard work , established = , endowment = A$224.3 million , budget = A$2.1 billion , type = Public research university , chancellor = Peter Varghese , vice_chancellor = Deborah Terry , city = B ...
. In 2008 he received an honorary degree from
Sungkyunkwan University Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU or simply ''Seongdae'', Hangul: 성균관대학교; Hanja: 成均館大學校) is a private comprehensive research university in South Korea. The institution traces its origins to the historic Sungkyunkwan, founde ...
in
South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and sharing a land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its ea ...
, and one from the Australian National University in 2010. Also in 2010 he was named an officer of the
Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...
.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McRobbie, Michael Scientists from Melbourne University of Queensland alumni Australian National University alumni Academic staff of the Australian National University 1950 births Living people Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Australian computer scientists Presidents of Indiana University