Ramazan Aygun Named Director of Research Computing

Kennesaw, Ga. (Aug 27, 2020) — Ramazan Aygun, associate professor of computer science in the  College of Computing and Software Engineering, has been named the new director of the Office of Research Computing at Kennesaw State University.  
 
“My goal is to promote and support faculty and their students by providing training and consultation on using the university’s  computational resources as well as offering technical expertise when faculty are developing external grant proposals with software/hardware requirements,” said Aygun. 
 
His office, a unit within the Office of Research, is responsible for coordinating efforts in the utilization of the university’s High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, a collection of separate servers interconnected on an isolated fast network. This shared resource is freely available to all KSU faculty and their designees engaged in research activities.  
 
“I look forward to working with Ramazan as he plans for the future of Research Computing at KSU,” said Phaedra Corso, vice president for research. “With his credentials and expertise focused on everything associated with data, he will be a valuable contributor in supporting the computing needs of KSU faculty by maximizing the usage of the HPC cluster in all types of interdisciplinary projects.” 
 
Aygun’s duties include increasing the availability and accessibility of the HPC cluster as well as developing a data management plan compliant with federal and state regulations concerning privacy and security of users and data. He also plans to collaborate with national computing networks, high tech companies, and other universities in interdisciplinary research opportunities and increase engagement with K-12 schools. 
 
“We would like to increase the university-wide awareness of the HPC cluster and its capabilities in handling complex data-intensive projects,” said Aygun. “We want to make sure that KSU faculty and researchers benefit from these available resources so that they can obtain preliminary results for their research, pursue external funding, and continue to use these resources during their research.” 
 
Before joining KSU this summer, Aygun was on the faculty at the University of Alabama in Huntsville for 17 years. He started out as an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department before being promoted to associate professor in 2009.  
 
His research interests include bioinformatics/biochemistry applications, machine learning, data mining, multimedia systems, database systems, video processing, and semantic computing. He has worked on different aspects of data science research such as data modeling or big data computing by positioning data at the core of his projects.  
 
Aygun’s research has garnered over $1 million in external funding from agencies, including the  National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health Small Business Technology Transfer program.  
 
“My research included analyzing datasets from molecular-level datasets to satellite imagery,” he said. “I collaborated with researchers in different fields including biology, biochemistry, robotics, and atmospheric science.” 
 
Aygun has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and over 40 journal papers. He has also co-authored a book, Data Analytics for Protein Crystallization, with Marc Pusey from iXpressGenes, Inc. in 2017. He also served on the organizing and program committees of around 60 international conferences and is an associate editor of the journal IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. 
 
Aygun earned his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Bilkent University in Turkey and his Master of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University in Turkey. He also completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.  

—Geena Lawrence