Back in 2000, NSF awarded a consortium of universities, led by Cornell, one of the first large Information Technology Research (ITR) grants for a project titled "Adaptive Software for Field-driven Simulations." As the Computer Science PI of this multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional project, I knew nothing about partial differential equations, finiteelements, Delaunay mesh generation, h- and p-refinement, or singularities at crack-tips, and I knew even less about how to inspire and lead large teams of researchers. Over the next 5 years and at the cost of 10 million dollars to US taxpayers, I learned these things (and fly-fishing) from Tony Ingraffea. The experience literally changed my life. I will try to convince you that it was for the better.