By Dan Adkins

"As the UK Alliance for Networking Excellence gains international stature, students of extraordinary ability will seek out its opportunities."

--Charles T. Wethington Jr.,
UK president

“This building will help us retain our already excellent faculty and will facilitate the recruiting of other top minds in this field.  As the UK Alliance for Networking Excellence gains international stature, students of extraordinary ability will seek out its opportunities,” UK President Charles T. Wethington Jr. said.

The building is named for James F. Hardymon, former chairman and chief executive officer of Textron Corp.  Hardymon also is a former member of the UK Board of Trustees and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering at UK.  Hardymon attended the dedication.  Hardymon provided a gift in April 1999 to establish five scholarships for students seeking a dual degree in engineering and business administration and two endowed chairs in the UK College of Engineering.

The two-story, 25,324-square-foot building provides infrastructure to support basic and applied research in high-speed computer networks and communications.  It also enhances UK’s connectivity to other universities, laboratories and researchers across the nation.

Wethington also announced the establishment of the UK Alliance for Networking Excellence Corporate Scholarship Program.  UK’s College of Engineering will offer 10 full-tuition, two-year scholarships annually for students focusing on computer networks and communications.  The scholarships are funded through support of corporations partnering with the university in its Alliance for Networking Excellence.

The opening of the Hardymon Building further cements UK’s position as a leader among American universities engaged in high-speed computing and networking.  UK already serves as a primary member for the South East Partnership to Share Computational Resources, a network that connects supercomputers at six southeastern state universities.

UK also is actively involved in Internet II, and is a regional partner in the National Science Foundation’s Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure supercomputer grant awarded to the National Computational Sciences Alliance.  UK’s new supercomputer recently thrust it into the ranks of the world leaders on a joint listing by the University of Tennessee and Mannheim University.  UK ranked 10th among U.S. universities and 200th among the world’s commercial, industrial, governmental and academic supercomputer sites.