For Immediate Release
January 22, 2007

GTRI Names New Deputy Director for Support Operations; Lisa Sills Brings 18 Years of Experience as a Researcher

Lisa Sills, deputy director for support operations at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) .  Georgia Tech Photo: Rob Felt Download 300 dpi version

After serving on several successful projects as a software engineer, Sills naturally evolved as a leader in the information sharing world at GTRI. As a result, she served as a project director or associate project director for the last 15 years, participating in projects ranging from the design and innovation stage to requirements analysis, implementation, testing, documentation and final reporting.

To her new position as deputy director for support operations for GTRI, Sills brings her ability to manage successful teams and her knowledge of information technology. Her new job title combined two positions into one: director of administration, held by the retiring Janice Rogers, and director of business operations, held previously by Charles Brown – who moved to the Vice-Provost’s office.

“Coming from the ranks I know how researchers live day to day,” explained Sills, who has almost 18 years of technical and managerial experience at GTRI. “I know the frustrations of the researchers with the system, and I hope to make other people aware of researcher issues and make improvements.”

In her new position that began on September 1, Sills is trying to create a world class research support team at GTRI. This support team comprises more than one hundred people from eight groups: personnel support, rate management, research property, support services, machine services, information systems, business services, and budgeting and finance.

Sills’ goals for this year include providing additional recognition and rewards for researchers, tailoring promotion guidelines to what researchers do on a daily basis, exercising financial discipline and improving customer service to researchers and staff.

Although much of her days are spent in meetings, Sills strives to solve the most prevalent researcher problems. When a lab director calls her about a space, information technology or personnel issue, Sills finds an answer.

“I am a problem solver by nature, so a job that presents a variety of challenges is perfect for me,” said Sills.

Before accepting this new position, Sills contributed to awarded research proposals totaling more than $9 million from city, state and federal organizations. Her most significant program development contributions over the past five years include managing and being actively involved in CISAnet, a unique secure information sharing network of criminal intelligence data among federal, state, and regional law enforcement agencies.

Sills also successfully acquired four multi-phased major contracts with the Georgia Courts Automation Commission totaling $3.2 million over a five-year period. She helped create centralized databases for Georgia in a secure, networked environment for fast retrieval of criminal and civil data. Sills also served as principal investigator for projects to create a statewide and national Protective Order Registry.

“It was very rewarding to get people who were not in the information technology domain to understand the requirements you have to meet to build a system for sharing information,” Sills added.

Inside Georgia Tech, Sills managed the design and implementation of many functional components of the student records side of the Registrar’s Office including online registration, transcript processing and degree audit validation. She also personally developed parts of the Financial Aid module used by the Georgia Tech Financial Aid office.

From 1998 through 2001, Sills served as director of the Georgia Tech Criminal Justice Science & Technology Center, a center created to apply science, research, and technology to the needs of the criminal justice system.
           
Sills also co-developed material for a new GTRI course for project directors. The two-day course covers the five main areas of the project life cycle at GTRI: proposal development, project planning, requirements gathering, monitoring and controlling, and project close out. The course is updated regularly to reflect new processes, new information, and new management tools available to GTRI project directors. To date, 219 people have completed the course, about 34 percent of the professional researchers at GTRI.

When asked if she’ll miss the daily research grind, Sills is quick to say no, but says that she’ll miss her teammates she worked with for so many years in her old lab, the Information Technology and Telecommunications Laboratory.

Sills lives in Roswell with her husband Drew and two sons, Andrew (age 17) and Austin (age 15).

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Georgia Institute of Technology
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MEDIA RELATIONS CONTACTS: Kirk Englehardt (404-407-7280); E-mail: (kirk.englehardt@gtri.gatech.edu) or John Toon (404-894-6986); E-mail: (jtoon@gatech.edu).

WRITER: Abby Vogel