Jackson Free Press

Entergy Mississippi is preparing to construct a new distribution operations center on the Capital Green Plaza complex between Tombigbee and South streets off Jefferson Street in Jackson.

Entergy Mississippi CEO Haley Fisackerly presented details on the project, which will entail refurbishing an existing building on South Street, to the Jackson City Council during a work session on Jan. 11. Fisackerly said that the project should cost about $13 million and will be completed in 2017. JBHM Architects is doing the construction.

The center will monitor Entergy Mississippi's distribution electrical system, which covers 45 counties in western Mississippi. The facility will also host engineering functions and other operations support groups, as well as an incident command center that customers will be able to call during major storms or crises. When finished, the building will house about 50 employees on a day-to-day basis and possibly 100 during a major storm restoration.

Entergy Mississippi plans to begin construction on the center in mid-2016 and will host a formal event for the opening of the facility in 2017.

The current distribution operations center on Tombigbee Street will be decommissioned when the new one begins operation. Long-range plans for the old building have not been finalized.

Airport Authority Enters Option to Lease agreement with Freedom Real Estate Investors

The Board of Commissioners for the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority voted last month to enter into an option-to-lease agreement with Freedom Real Estate Investors, LLC, which gives Freedom 270 days to decide whether to lease up to 130 acres of property the JMAA owns for commercial and retail development. The proposed development includes restaurants, banks, apparel, sporting goods, jewelry, and household goods stores. Lakeland Drive and Airport Road border the project site to the north and west, respectively. The Parkway Shopping Center is not part of the site.

The project required the JMAA board to make a quick decision on whether to move forward with the option agreement, as some financing components required to fund it are time sensitive.

With the lease, JMAA will maintain ownership of the land and act as a landlord to Freedom Real Estate. Since the proposed development is a Freedom Real Estate project, Freedom will assume all risks of the development. Freedom Real Estate will also finance all phases of the project, including the initial assessment phase.

The company has not yet identified or hired any appraisers for the development because it presently only has an option to lease on the property and has not yet exercised it. Should Freedom decide to exercise the Option, JMAA will hire appraisers to determine the fair market value of the property for lease.

JSU's Big Data Thought Leaders Colloquium Series

Jackson State University's College of Science, Engineering and Technology is welcoming some of the nation's brightest minds in research and application to its campus this spring as part of a focus on "Big Data," a White House priority directing the government and the nation to improve society's technological capabilities through the use of data resources.

Thomas A. DeFanti, a research scientist at the Qualcomm Institute in San Diego and a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will be the first presenter for JSU's CSET Big Data Thought Leaders Colloquium Series, starting at 10 a.m., Thursday, Jan. 21, in the engineering building's auditorium.

DeFanti will talk about "Big Virtual Reality for Big Data—the Next Wave," which focuses on shaping the future of research with the next generation of high-resolution, 3D and high-speed data visualization. Part of his presentation will include how digital cinema technology used in Hollywood can help improve animation and visual arts.

The series' other presenters will include:

• Jackson State University alumnus Nathan Slater, vice president of cloud service sales at C Spire, who will present on software development and project management in information technologies on Feb. 25.

• Maxine Brown, director of the Electronic Visualization Lab at University of Illinois at Chicago. His March 10 presentation will focus on 3D Big Data visualization and developing new technologies for single-camera use.

• Sastry Pantula, dean of the College of Science at Oregon State University and former director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Mathematical Sciences. On March 11, he will give a presentation on the applications of time series analysis, which is the examination of sequential data points in a continuous time interval, and econometric modeling, which is the use of statistical models to study the relationship between factors as they pertain to economic phenomena.

• Malek Adjouadi, professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Florida International University, founding director of the Center for Advanced Technology and Education and co-leader of the joint neuro-engineering program between Florida International University and Miami Children's Hospital. On March 31, he will speak on vision-based guidance systems, machine vision applications and biomedical imaging and diagnostics.

• Falko Kuester, professor of visualization and virtual reality at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology at the University of California at San Diego and director of the Center of Graphics, Visualization and Virtual Reality. His presentation, which does not currently have a date set, will cover Big Data analytics, including integration, volume, visualization, validity, variety and veracity.

• Larry Smarr, professor of physics and founding director of California Institute of Information Technology. He will give a presentation on telecommunications and development of cyber infrastructure, telemedicine, applications to public health, personalized health management and personalized genomics. The date of his presentation is pending.

To register for the CSET Big Data Thought Leaders Colloquium Series, visit www.jsums.edu/science.