In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the high performance computing community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

Ursula Basser

The CERN Council has announced the election of Dr. Ursula Basser as its 23rd president. Basser, who earned her PhD at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, is currently the deputy director of France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics. She has been a delegate of the CERN Council since 2016 and will take over for Professor Sijbrand de Jong.

“CERN as an organisation is essential to make progress in particle physics, as we need continuous, long-term efforts,” said Ursula Bassler. “During the upcoming update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, it will be important to design the vision for the future infrastructures in our field and to start laying out a path for their realisation with the CERN Member States and the global particle physics community. I’m looking forward to working as Council President, together with the CERN directorate, the European Strategy Group and all delegations, on this challenging endeavour.”

Jack Dongarra

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and ACM have awarded Jack Dongarra the SIAM/ACM Prize in Computational Science and Engineering. The award cites Dongarra’s key role in the development of software and accompanying standards. Dongarra is a professor at UT and a distinguished research member in ORNL’s Computational and Applied Mathematics Group.

“This is a validation of the research and efforts that I and my coworkers have made over the last few decades,” said Dongarra. “Supercomputing and exascale computing play important roles in everything from energy to health to national security, so our work is and will continue to be of vital importance.”

Jane Herriman

Jane Herriman, the director of diversity and outreach for Julia Computing, has joined the NumFOCUS board of directors for the 2018-2019 term. Herriman is a PhD candidate in materials science at Caltech and will be rejoining Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a Lawrence Graduate Scholar.

Jane Herriman says, “NumFOCUS’s work within scientific computing strengthens the open source infrastructure upon which scientists rely, provides infrastructure and support for open source contributors, and helps build a stronger and more vibrant open source scientific computing community. I am excited to learn more about and help support the many valuable open source scientific computing projects supported by NumFOCUS.”

Steve Litster

Markley Group, a provider of data center facilities, cloud computing, and network services, has announced that Dr. Steve Litster has joined as chief technology officers. Litster has more than twenty years of experience in designing enterprise infrastructure, large scale networks, and scalable cloud-based solutions. Most recently, he was the global lead for scientific computing at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research.

“I’m excited to be joining an organization with such a strong reputation of unparalleled performance and reliability,” said Steve Litster Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer. “Working with our clients across all sectors of the industry, our goal is to provide services ranging from hosted systems to fully functional managed platforms, reducing the effort and ongoing costs associated with managing data centers, networks, storage, and data movement.”

Irene Qualters

Irene Qualters has been chosen as associate laboratory director for simulation and computing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Qualters, who is currently a senior science adviser in the CISE directorate of the NSF, will be responsible for HPC, theory, and simulation in support of the NNSA and other programs. Prior to her nine years at the NSF, Qualters worked at Cray Research for twenty years. She holds an MS in Computer Science from the University of Detroit.

Andrea Zou

NVXL Technology, Inc., a disaggregated compute acceleration startup, has announced the appointment of Andria Zou as vice president for business development and sales. Zou, who was most recently the director of data center sales at Xilinx, has more than two decades of selling complex compute, storage, and networking solutions.

“It is not often that a truly revolutionary technology comes along in a manner that can redefine a market,” Zou said. “NVXL’s polymorphic acceleration has the ability to dramatically change the way compute acceleration is delivered with ease-of-use. I am excited to join the team and help bring this vision to reality.”

To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here.

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.