Former OARnet leader returns to Ohio after four years leading Texas network

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Dec 3, 2019) — Pankaj Shah, president and chief executive officer of the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) in Texas, has been named the seventh executive director of the Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet).

Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) Chancellor Randy Gardner announced Shah’s appointment today. Shah had served as executive director of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) and OARnet before taking the Texas post in 2015; he will return to Ohio in February 2020. Denis Walsh, OARnet’s chief relationship officer, has been serving as interim executive director of OARnet since Paul Schopis retired earlier this year. Schopis replaced Shah as executive director of OARnet upon the latter’s 2015 departure. [Read the full press release on OARnet | Press]

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Zayo Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZAYO) was selected by Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) to provide data center colocation in zColo’s Ashburn facility and fiber connectivity to support MAX’s network services to its academic, research, government, scientific and business communities. MAX is a center at the University of Maryland (UMD) that operates a regional advanced cyberinfrastructure platform. [Read the full announcement on Zayo.com | News]

DENVER, Co. (Nov. 18, 2019) — The Women in IT Networking at SC (WINS) has been recognized in the annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards, presented at the 2019 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis. The list of winners was revealed at the HPCwire booth at the event, and on the HPCwire website, www.HPCwire.com.

WINS was recognized with the following honor:

Readers’ Choice: Workforce Diversity Leadership Award

The coveted annual HPCwire Readers’ and Editors’ Choice Awards are determined through a nomination and voting process with the global HPCwire community, as well as selections from the HPCwire editors. The awards are an annual feature of the publication and constitute prestigious recognition from the HPC community. The awards are revealed each year to kick off the annual supercomputing conference, which showcases high performance computing, networking, storage and data analysis. [Read the full press release on KINBER | News]