AUSTIN, Tex., July 2 — Dan C. Stanzione Jr. has been named executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. A nationally recognized leader in high performance computing, Stanzione has served as deputy director since June 2009 and will assume the new post July 1.

“The University of Texas at Austin has become a global leader in supercomputing thanks to TACC and the research it supports,” said UT Austin President Bill Powers. “Under Dan’s leadership, I believe our computers will become even more powerful and our research even more world-changing.”

TACC is a national leader in providing high-end advanced computing resources and services to researchers, conducting leading research and development projects, and providing training and education for the local and national scientific community. The center provides a comprehensive portfolio for virtually every mode of computational research and runs some of the world’s largest computing and data systems, with thousands of users from hundreds of institutions investigating such issues as gene sequencing, biofuel production, and weather and climate modeling.

“As deputy director of TACC, Dan has demonstrated his ability to manage the organization and deliver on its commitments to provide world-class computational facilities, research and support to benefit the nation, state and university,” said Juan M. Sanchez, vice president for research at UT Austin. “I am confident that under his new role, TACC will continue to be an internationally recognized center of excellence in advanced computing, offering our faculty, students and researchers the computational tools and technical support needed to sustain our world-class research enterprise.”

Stanzione is the principal investigator (PI) for several leading projects including a multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to deploy and support TACC’s Stampede supercomputer over four years. In Stampede’s first year of operation, 3,500 researchers nationwide used it to further their science and engineering research projects. Stanzione is also the PI of TACC’s upcoming Wrangler system, a supercomputer designed specifically for data-focused applications. He served for six years as the co-director of the iPlant Collaborative, a large-scale NSF life sciences cyberinfrastructure in which TACC is a major partner. In addition, Stanzione was a co-principal investigator for TACC’s Ranger and Lonestar supercomputers, large-scale NSF systems previously deployed at UT Austin.

“It is an honor to lead an organization with the tradition of excellence we have at TACC,” Stanzione said. “It’s a fascinating time in supercomputing, with the underlying technology changing rapidly, and the rise of ‘big data’ and cloud computing changing the marketplace. Computing and data are becoming pervasive in many fields of academic inquiry, including medicine. TACC is poised to capitalize on all of these trends and to help even more researchers make new discoveries in the years to come.”

TACC is also preparing a new office facility adjacent to its research complex at the J.J. Pickle Research Campus in North Austin, which will allow TACC to expand its visualization capabilities and provide new spaces for training, collaboration and events for the public.

Stanzione previously served as the founding director of the Fulton High Performance Computing Initiative at Arizona State University and served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science Policy Fellow in the NSF’s Division of Graduate Education. He has served as acting director of TACC since January.

Stanzione received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and his master’s degree and doctorate in computer engineering from Clemson University, where he later directed the supercomputing laboratory and served as an assistant research professor of electrical and computer engineering.

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Source: TACC