Pierce is the Assistant Director for the Science Gateways Group in Research Technologies Applications at Indiana University. Pierce received his Ph.D. from Florida State University (Physics) in 1998 in computational condensed matter physics. His current research and development work focuses on computational sciences with an emphasis on Grid computing and computational web portals. Prior to forming the Science Gateway Group, Pierce served as assistant director for the Community Grids Laboratory at Indiana University's Pervasive Technologies Institute. Pierce supervises the research activities of software engineering staff and Ph.D. students, and serves as principal investigator on multiple federally-funded research projects. Pierce leads research efforts in the following areas: the application of service-oriented architectures and real-time streaming techniques to geographical information systems and sensor networks; the development of open source science web portal software for accessing Grid computing and data resources; and Grid-based distributed computing applications in computational chemistry and material science, chemical informatics, and geophysics.