The 2017 Steve Jones Internet Research Lecture will feature Larry Smarr, Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), at UC San Diego. Smarr, a physicist and leader in scientific computing, supercomputer applications, and Internet infrastructure, will address, “Building the Pacific Research Platform: Supernetworks for Big Data Science.” Smarr’s lecture will be presented during the 2017 annul conference of International Communication Association (ICA), on Friday, May 26, 11:00 – 12:15 pm in Hilton San Diego Bayfront, 3, Aqua 313. In the lecture, Smarr will discuss the exponential rise of Big Data which is demanding new technological solutions in visualization, machine learning, and high performance cyberinfrastructure. Smarr believes that the rise of artificial intelligence will both be powered by these developments and be essential for deriving understanding from the tsunami of data. Smarr will illustrate how NSF-funded Pacific Research Platform, which provides an Internet platform with 100-1000 times the bandwidth of today's commodity Internet to all the research universities on the West Coast, is being designed from the application needs of researchers from particle physics to climate to human health. Even fields like archaeology, digital libraries, and social media analysis are engaged. Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research (CCCSIR, www.cccsir.com) established Steve Jones Internet Research Lecture Series in 2003 to bring leading Internet researchers to annual ICA conventions to promote the development and interest of Internet research. With the interdisciplinary nature of Internet research, the lecture series would like to bring researchers from various disciplines as well as industry leaders to establish dialogues with communication researchers about topics and issues of Internet research. The theme of Steve Jones Lecture Series is " The Internet as Culture.” This event is co-sponsored by University of Illinois, Chicago, and the International Communication Association. For more information about this event, please contact Shing-Ling Sarina Chen, sarina.chen@uni.edu.