Lucy said UNC-CH's portion of the grant was indirectly related to the Carolina Computing Initiative because of the ongoing partnership between UNC-CH and IBM.
He said IBM wishes to work with UNC-CH to pursue e-business, a term coined by the company to describe the relationship between the Internet and business.
A portion of the money will be used for course development that will influence e-business, Lucy said.
Andy Lindos, program director of the IBM Research Triangle Park Center for Advanced Studies, said two-thirds of the $500,000 allotted to UNC-CH for hardware will be used by Internet Technology Services for multi-media support.
Lindos added that the remainder of the money set aside for hardware will go to the UNC-CH Department of Computer Science.
UNC-CH computer science Professor Don Smith has received much of the money geared toward the department to fund his research and classes in e-business.
He said the grant for his program was dispersed over time, starting in October 2000. Smith said his amount was a credit for $165,000 in hardware from IBM. The money is being used to build laboratories for project development.
Computer Science 190, a course which studies enterprise computing, began this fall using the hardware given to Smith.
"It's going to give students dedicated access to high-performance computing systems in this course," Smith said.
He said the lab will serve several purposes because it will be available during the summer months for research.
Lucy said the technology available from this grant ultimately will better both the state's universities and economy. "(UNC-CH) and other universities are seeing that in order to compete in global economy, being computer literate is absolutely essential."
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