CHAPEL HILL, N.C., Jan. 23 – Ashok Krishnamurthy, PhD, director of research and scientific development at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC), will join the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at UNC Chapel Hill as deputy director on Feb. 1, RENCI Director Stan Ahalt, PhD, announced today.

Krishnamurthy is also an associate professor in the computer and electrical engineering department at The Ohio State University and served as OSC co-interim executive director from September 2009 to August 2012. His work has focused on building engagements with the academic research community across Ohio, developing and expanding the center’s economic development mission, and developing and sustaining a robust statewide cyberinfrastructure to support OSC academic and industrial clients.

As deputy director of RENCI he will take responsibility for many similar functions, said Ahalt, including managing and enhancing research partnerships with faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University, building relationships between RENCI and Triangle area businesses, and leading efforts to bring new federal research funding to RENCI and its partner institutions.

“Ashok has built a reputation for working successfully with stakeholders involved in a diverse, university-based technology research organization, including faculty researchers, administrators, funding agencies, government and the business sector,” said Ahalt. “As a manager, he knows how to recruit, motivate and retain the kind of experts RENCI needs to thrive. He will be a tremendous asset to RENCI, UNC, and the North Carolina research community.”

Krishnamurthy worked closely with Ahalt during his tenure as OSC executive director (2004 – 2009) and played a crucial role in establishing OSC’s successful industrial outreach initiative called Blue Collar Computing. The program targets small and medium-sized businesses that lack high performance computing (HPC) resources, providing them with the training, expertise and advanced technology tools they need to enhance their companies’ competitiveness. He also helped develop and deploy cyberinfrastructure that allows researchers to easily access and use computing and storage resources at OSC, including OSC On-demand, a remote interface that provides access to a variety of services and applications, and Data Import Storage and Collaboration (DISC), which allows users to easily access, analyze and store large data sets from scientific instruments.

Before his work at OSC and OSU, he served as the academic lead for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program in the Integrated Modeling and Test area. He has designed and provided numerous training courses for DoD User Groups on all aspects of the MATLAB programming language.

“RENCI offered me an opportunity I couldn’t pass up,” said Krishnamurthy. “With its roots at UNC, its close connections to three of the top research universities in the world, and its location in the technology-rich Research Triangle area, there is a tremendous opportunity to be involved in projects that have a lasting impact. I am honored to bring my enthusiasm, energy and years of experience to RENCI and to play a role in its continued success.”

Krishnamurthy holds PhD and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology. His areas of expertise include HPC, cyberinfrastructure, data exploitation, HPC in industry, American competiveness initiatives, signal and image processing and software development.

About RENCI

RENCI (Renaissance Computing Institute) develops and deploys advanced technologies to enable research discoveries and practical innovations. RENCI partners with researchers, policy makers and technology leaders to engage and solve the problems that affect North Carolina, our nation and the world. An institute of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, RENCI was launched in 2004 as a collaborative effort involving UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University.

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Source: RENCI