Alumni Spotlight - Graham Mowbray
Graham Mowbray, B.Sc.'78, has big plans for Memorial's Department of
Computing and Communications (C&C) when he takes over as director
on Sept. 5, 2006. Mr. Mowbray, whose appointment was approved by
Memorial’s Board of Regents in July, will increase the
university’s computing capabilities At the time of his
appointment, he said C&C plays a vital role at Memorial,
supporting those services most take for granted, like email and
access to the internet. But more than that, he said, the department
is integral to supporting research activities of the
university.A graduate of Memorial with a major in computer science, Mr. Mowbray has worked for the past 30 years in the information technology and computer fields with the provincial government and xwave. He’s executive director of ACEnet (Atlantic Computational Excellence Network). That group is a partnership of seven universities from around Atlantic Canada that work together to operate large-scale high performance computing facilities for research. Its
Mr. Mowbray says Memorial’s stature as a research university is growing, and a key component in supporting that growth is pursuing initiatives such as ACEnet and taking "other steps to ensure that Memorial can provide a world-class research computing infrastructure.”
Aside from growing the university’s profile as a top-notch computing research centre, Mr. Mowbray said he looks forward to tackling some of the challenges C&C will be faced with over the coming years.
“C&C is challenged, as are most IT organizations in this day and age, by trying to keep pace with the tremendous rate of change of all aspects of the IT environment,” he said. “It is never simple to try to successfully manage technology change, people change and deliver to client expectations. I know that C&C have made great strides recently in re-tooling the server environment and standardizing on tools but the IT world is like a journey that has no end, there is continuing change to contend with and this can often bring challenges and stress.”
“I am excited to be joining C&C,” added Mr. Mowbray, “and am looking forward to working with the team of professionals there.”