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Home / History

Quick facts

  • Established in 2008 by five founding organisations; today there are 16 members.
  • Not-for-profit company limited by membership guarantee.
  • Constituted by its members: universities and research institutions.
  • Funded through member subscriptions and income from service consumption.
  • Originated in NSW, now operating in four states for national benefit.
  • Supported by Commonwealth and NSW State government investments.
  • Strategic partnerships with the ARDC, AARNet, AAF and NCI.
  • NSW node operator for the national RDS and Nectar NCRIS infrastructure projects.
  • Member of  AeRO and Research Australia.

 

Founding Public Purpose

From inception in 2008 our vision was to foster, drive and coordinate the sustainable development, delivery and uptake of world-class eResearch services and solutions.

Intersect set about delivering its mission in its first decade through;

  • representing NSW interests and research leadership at the national level through direct participation in the various NCRIS Boards and committees.
  • acting as the primary coordinating mechanism for the delivery of Platform for Collaboration (PfC) agency services and other service providers to the NSW research community.
  • driving the development, uptake and effective use of eResearch technologies by embedding staff in member organisations.
  • developing innovative, sustainable and commercial grade eResearch technologies/services.
  • the provision of training, professional development and career enhancement opportunities.
  • promoting more effective collaboration between NSW researchers and links with other national and international centres of excellence.
  • providing a national focus for the application of eResearch in the humanities, arts and social sciences
  • working towards greater efficiencies through:
    • sharing common infrastructure/technology platforms
    • facilitating joint funding bids including with international, government and industry partners
    • leveraging co-funded projects with Platforms for Collaboration, NCRIS and other capability areas

For:

  • the research leadership aspirations of members
  • the research and innovation needs of government and industry

Intersect exists as a not-for-profit entity to provide a public benefit by carrying out this mission. The academic research and innovation it promotes generates broader public value in supporting an agenda focused on initially NSW and, with maturation, national research priorities.

Where appropriate and where synergies exist, Intersect develops and provides products and services to non-member organisations on a market basis in order to:

  • provide research opportunities and research training benefits to academics and students
  • enhance infrastructure and information resources for member benefit
  • fund the continuing operations of Intersect

In the beginning…

25 June 2008, Sydney Australia: A proposal for an “Institute for Trans-disciplinary eResearch Services & Technology” was approved by the DVCsR of the University of Sydney, Macquarie University, the University of NSW, Southern Cross University and the CEO of the Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia-Pacific (SIRCA).

A Board of Directors was appointed with Professor Mark Wainwright as Chair, Paul Martin as Secretary and Dr Michael Briers as interim CEO, and founding directors were John Shipp, John Masters, James Dalziel.

Intersect was incorporated as a not-for-profit company limited-by-guarantee, governed by a Constitution that grants NSW research institutions eligibility as members.

The Department of State and Regional Development (DSRD) approved a Science Leveraging Fund grant, which provided funding to Intersect over three years. Dr. Ian Gibson was appointed CEO and the initial goal of establishing a worldwide viable Intersect by mid-2008 was achieved.

16 December 2008 Media Release

Timeline

Founding CEO Mike Briers

24 June 08

Appointed to establish Intersect and recruit new CEO

University of Sydney

25 June 08

Joins as founding Member

University of New South Wales

25 June 08

Joins as founding Member

SIRCA

25 June 08

Joins as founding Affiliate

Macquarie University

25 June 08

Founding Member from 2008-2016

Southern Cross University

25 June 08

Joins as founding Member

University of Technology Sydney

23 July 08

Joins as founding Member

University of Newcastle

21 November 08

Joins as Subscribing Member

New CEO Ian Gibson

16 December 08

Appointed as first permanent CEO

2009 ARC LIEF HPC Grant Awarded

01 January 09

University of New England

30 July 09

Joins as Subscribing Member

Western Sydney University

20 July 10

Joins as Subscribing Member

NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage

01 January 12

Joins as Affiliate

Charles Sturt University

02 January 12

Joins as Subscribing Member

CSIRO

23 January 12

Joins as Affiliate

RDSI selects Intersect as NSW Storage Cloud Node

01 July 12

First five nodes of the $53 million Research Data Storage Infrastructure project announced to transform research data collection storage and access nationally. RDSI along with the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) project research cloud are two main pillars of the Government’s Super Science initiative initially financed through the Education Investment Fund (EIF).

University of Canberra

01 January 13

Joins as Subscribing Member

Orange Supercomputer

15 March 13

A brand new 34TFlop supercomputer is launched for NSW by NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Professor Mary O’Kane. Assembled by SGI and hosted at the new Macquarie Telecom iC2 datacentre, Orange supports world-class research from member organisations. Funded through the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme. The LIEF grant, led by the University of Sydney’s Professor Leo Radom was supplemented by investments from other university members.

RDSI node commissioned

16 December 13

The NSW RDSI Node enters production by beginning a phased deployment with a soft launch to researchers.

SAX Institute

01 January 14

Joins as Subscribing Member

2014 ARC LIEF HPC Grant Awarded

01 January 14

Nectar selects Intersect as NSW Compute Cloud Node

31 March 14

Intersect becomes part of the $47 million National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources compute cloud to transform research data computing. Nectar along with the Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI) storage project are two main pillars of the Australian Government’s Super Science initiative initially financed through the Education Investment Fund (EIF).

New COO Marc Bailey

31 May 14

Previously CIO Macquarie University, formerly CTO Objective Corporation Limited.

Space launch

16 August 14

The NSW RDSI Node publicly launches as Space.intersect.org.au, making available up to 15PB of research data storage across all disciplines. 

Australian Catholic University

10 September 14

Joins as Subscribing Member

Time Launch

01 March 15

A $1.5M investment delivers 4,500 CPU cores to be added to the Nectar Research Cloud, boosting national capacity to approximately 35,000+ cores. NectarCloud unburdens researchers from operating local physical computer infrastructure. Researchers are empowered to self-host websites, databases, virtual labs, applications and online tools without hardware; easily, quickly and flexibly.

New CEO Marc Bailey

01 June 15

Gibson departs for Professorship at UNSW

University of Wollongong

30 June 15

Subscribing Member 2010-2015

La Trobe University

18 November 15

Joins as Subscribing Member

2016 ARC LIEF HPC Grant Awarded

01 January 16

2017 ARC LIEF HPC Grant Awarded

01 January 17

Deakin University

20 January 17

Joins as Subscribing Member

Intersect@10 Celebration

26 September 18

Intersect marks its first decade with a fresh new look, website and online researcher service system at events in Sydney and Melbourne with members, researchers, staff and alumni.

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