2006. He increased external funding by securing millions of dollars in grants for life science initiatives. On a July 2006 trip through China he established a cooperative research program with Tsinghua University in Beijing. By September 2006, the then president of Indiana University, Adam Herbert, announced he wanted to leave office before July 2008. On March 1, 2007 McRobbie was selected as IU's 18th president and took office on July 1, 2007. He served on the board of directors for ChaCha (the Indiana-based search engine). Some press were critical of a deal that used IU librarians as "guides", although McRobbie resigned from the board before becoming president of the University. McRobbie has served on the board of trustees for Internet2 since 2009, and was named chair of the board starting in 2012. In 2012 he announced a new supercomputer called Big Red II at IU. Although other universities operate larger computers, by some measures this Cray XK7 was expected to be the largest for use by a single US university and not a consortium or national resource. The original Big Red computer was installed in 2006. On August 14, 2020, McRobbie announced that he planned to retire at the end of June 2021 after 14 years as the head of the university and that a search committee was being formed to find his replacement. Personal life While still an undergraduate at The University of Queensland, McRobbie married Brisbane native Andrea Gibson in 1973. They had three children together. She died from brain cancer in 2003. A fellowship was named in her memory. McRobbie has three children and three stepchildren. His second wife, Laurie Burns McRobbie, was born in Michigan and worked as a technologist for 20 years. Both of them had been widowed before they married in 2005. Laurie McRobbie was the executive director of member and partner relations for Internet2, and an adjunct faculty member in IU's School of Informatics. After living in Indiana for 13 years, McRobbie became a US citizen in October 2010 while still retaining his original Australian citizenship. Honors and awards McRobbie was made a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest honor the state can bestow, in 2007 by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. That same year he received an honorary degree from the University of Queensland. In 2008 he received an honorary degree from Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, and one from the Australian National