Assistant Research Professor, Ph.D. Program in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, RIT

Director, Interactive Collaboration Environments Lab, Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure, RIT

Member of the Board, NYSGrid

Director, Collaboration Special Interest Group, Internet2

Gurcharan is currently Director of Research Computing at Rochester Institute of Technology, reporting to the Vice President for Research. He provides the leadership and vision to foster research at RIT by partnering with researchers to support advanced research technology resources in computation, collaboration, and community building. Gurcharan is an Assistant Research Professor in the Ph.D. Program of the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences at RIT.

Gurcharan has a special interest and expertise in innovative collaboration tools, the social aspects of technologically connected communities, and the cyberinfrastructure required to support them. He started the first Access Grid nodes at RIT and Dartmouth College. At RIT, he created and directs the Interactive Collaboration Environments Lab housed in the Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure, as a teaching and learning, research and development, practical application, and evaluative studies lab.

Gurcharan created and directs the Internet2 Collaboration Special Interest Group, and is a member of the ResearchChannel Internet2 Working Group. He serves as a member of the Board and as Liaison to its Middleware Group of NYSGrid, an advanced collaborative cyberinfrastructure for supporting and enhancing research and education.

Gurcharan was Associate Director for Research Computing at Dartmouth College from 1995-2004. He was a Member of the Real Time Communications Advisory Group, Internet2 from 2005-2006. He has served as a consultant on several grant proposals to design and implement multipoint collaborative conferencing systems and twice as a panelist for the NSF Advanced Networking Infrastructure Research Program (2001-2002).

His background includes teaching in the Geography Department and supervising the UNIX Consulting Group in Academic Computing at the University of Southern California from 1992-1995 and teaching and research at the University of California, Berkeley from 1980-1992, where he received his Ph.D. in anthropology.