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Home / History

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

Founding member from 2008-2021

University of New South Wales

25 June 08

Joins as Founding Member

SIRCA

25 June 08

Founding Member from 2008-2020

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

Founding Member from 2008-2020

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

Charles Sturt University

02 January 12

Joins as Subscribing Member

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).

Intersect commences training

01 December 12

In 2012, Intersect delivered a single training course for ten people. This was the start of what was to become Intersect’s digital research training program. By 2020, the program was training over 5000 people per annum, making Intersect one of the largest providers of digital research training in the country.

University of Canberra

01 January 13

Joins as Subscribing Member

Orange Supercomputer

15 March 13

A brand new 34 TFlop 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.

RDSI node commissioned

16 December 13

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

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.

University of Adelaide

05 September 19

Joins as Subscribing Member

NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage

07 November 19

Joins as Affiliate Member

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