Technology Hub
About the Hub
The mission of the Technology Hub (Tech-Hub) is to support content cores by providing consultative services to bring researchers, data sets, infrastructure, analytics and analysts together to solve large scale data driven problems on the USC campus. The Tech-Hub’s responsibilities include: 1) Support and consultation for the establishment of a baseline infrastructure to support data; 2) Contributing to the Center’s efforts to assess and catalogue the healthcare data sets available to USC researchers via BDHSC; 3) Assessing and cataloging computational infrastructure available to USC researchers; 4) Providing advice on analytical tools and skilled analysts available to USC researchers; 5) Conducting education and outreach activities to connect infrastructure, data, analytic tools and data scientists and researchers. Tech-Hub staff also guide faculty in selected ancillary topics which are needed to successfully deliver analytical research including data/cyber security and privacy policies, tools, and technical capabilities. The Tech-Hub is led by Dr. Neset Hikmet and consists of expertise in IT, machine learning, and cyber security.
Technical Support
The Tech-Hub provides technical and intellectual support for infrastructure development and capacity building for big data health science research across campus. Its support includes maintaining select computing resources; advising on technical tools, technologies, platforms, cybersecurity, and methodologies; and providing expertise on computing focused funding opportunities among other responsibilities.
Consultation
The Tech-Hub’s investigators and staff have diverse expertise in the field of computer science and information technology in healthcare as well as in technology commercialization. The Tech-hub is assessing big data research resources across campus, including server infrastructure, capabilities, and related support on campus as well as consultation for big data science analytics tools.
Training
Participating Tech-Hub members assist the BDHSC to coordinate the Center’s key initiatives including the annual conference (and in particular the successful student case competition), outreach (communications, scheduling and evaluation), and education and training on big data tools.
Membership
Neset Hikmet, Ph.D.
Hub Co-Lead
Dr. Hikmet has experienced both breadth and depth in the design, development, deployment, and maintenance of technology systems and services primarily in the healthcare sector. Dr. Hikmet has led numerous distributed data collection and analytics projects and has significant experience in leading data analytics projects within academia, including utilization of a wide range of analytics methods and approaches.
Paul Sagona
Hub Co-Lead
Paul Sagona is the Executive Director of Research Computing. He has worked at the university for over 10 years, having served as the Director of the College of Engineering and Computing’s High Performance Computing Group, High Performance Computing Systems Architect for Research Cyberinfrastructure, and Interim Executive Director of Research Computing. During his time in research computing, he and his team designed and deployed the largest HPC computing cluster in USC history, played a key role in defining and pioneering the first campus-level research computing team, and represented USC internationally for his team’s success in deploying one of the largest scientific computations ever conducted in a cloud environment.
Dilek Akgün, RTTP
Hub Member
Dilek has experience in knowledge in all aspects of technology transfer, research administration, project development, innovation ecosystems, international and national grants, university –industry collaborations, research agreements, and licensing agreements. Her areas of interest include innovation, innovation ecosystem, technology transfer, persuasive technologies and project management.
Jianjun Hu, Ph.D.
Hub Member
Dr. Hu’s research interests are in the areas of machine learning, deep learning, data mining, big data, evolutionary computation and their applications in bioinformatics, material informatics, and health informatics. His research has been sponsored by NSF, NIH, Nvidia, and the South Carolina Department of Transportation.
Chin-Tser Huang, Ph.D.
Hub Member
Professor Huang’s research interests include network security, network protocol design and verification, and distributed systems. His current research focuses on intrusion detection and wireless network security.
David Reddy
Hub Member
David Reddy is a research facilitator for Research Computing.