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!

Sven Breuner

Excelero has announced that it has appointed Sven Breuner to a newly-created role: field chief technical officer. Sven joins Excelero from ThinkParQ, where he served for five years as CTO and CEO. Prior to ThinkParQ, Sven began his career at the Fraunhofer Competence Center for High Performance Computing in Germany.

“Excelero is transforming the way that organizations with performance-critical workloads approach NVMe, helping them take full advantage of modern NVMe drives and achieve a significant competitive advantage,” Breuner said. “I am thrilled to be a part of this exciting team and collaborate on a path of further innovation.”

Jeff Brown

Submer Immersion Cooling has announced the appointment of Jefferson S. Brown as managing director, North America. Brown most recently served as CCO for UK2 Group and vice president of sales for Savvis. He has more than 25 years of experience in datacenter sales and operations.

“Success in the North American market is key to Submer’s international mission to make Data Centers more efficient, to increase densities and make them ultimately quicker to deploy. Having someone of Jeff’s caliber to lead Submer in the world’s single largest Data Center market is a clear sign to the HPC, Hyperscale and Data Center communities that Submer is serious about bringing the same advantages to North America and the USA in particular,” said Daniel Pope, CEO of Submer. “Having Jeff at the North American helm with his experience and track record positions us as a key-player.”

Omar Ghattas

Omar Ghattas has been selected as the recipient of the 2019 SIAM Geosciences Career Prize. Ghattas, a professor of geological sciences and mechanical engineering at the Institute for Computational Engineering at Sciences in Austin, has authored over 140 publications in top scientific journals and won two Gordon Bell prizes. He is being recognized for “groundbreaking contributions in analysis, methods, algorithms, and software for grand challenge computational problems in geosciences, and for exceptional influence as mentor, educator, and collaborator.”

“Omar’s work is a wonderful example of the ground-breaking interdisciplinary research that is the hallmark of ICES,” says ICES Director Karen Willcox. “He combines sophisticated mathematical analysis with deep physical insight, and wraps it all up in high-performance scalable algorithms.”

Stephen Gold

Cray Inc. has announced that its board of directors has elected Stephen Gold as a member of the board and appointed him to the Strategic Technology Assessment Committee. Gold was group CMO and vice president, business development of IBM Watson. He is currently the chief commercial officer at HZO.

“I am very pleased to join the Cray team at a very exciting time for the Company,” said Gold. “Cray is more than an iconic brand and company, it is meeting and exceeding the challenges industry and governments face by the convergence of supercomputing, big data and artificial intelligence. I look forward to serving as a board member and working closely with Cray’s leadership team.”

Dave Hitz

Dave Hitz has announced that he is retiring from NetApp. Hitz, along with James Lau, cofounded NetApp in 1992. Prior to 1992, he worked as a senior engineer at Auspex Corporation and held engineering positions at MIPS Computer. Hitz will remain with NetApp in an honorary, unpaid position (“Founder Emeritus”).

“Today, it is NetApp itself that makes me most proud. Few tech companies make it to ten years, never mind twenty or thirty,” wrote Hitz. “In closing, let me say thank you to all of the customers, partners and employees who have helped make NetApp the place that it is, a company I am proud of and that I am confident will continue to thrive.”

Monica Kumar

Nutanix has announced that it has appointed Monica Kumar as senior vice president of marketing. Kumar’s experience includes more than 22 years of experience working at Oracle, where she was vice president of Oracle Cloud Platform Marketing and launched several industry-leading products. She also spent time in product marketing at Informix.

“Nutanix is known for product excellence and unwavering dedication to the customer. As the market continues to shift toward multi-cloud adoption and Nutanix builds out its platform with new offerings, it faces new challenges in delivering on that excellence without complexity,” said Kumar. “It’s an honor and privilege to join the fearless, passionate and humble leadership team at Nutanix. I’m excited to bring my experience to this incredible company as it enters the next cycle of its growth, building a true enterprise cloud platform for companies of all sizes.”

Kimberly Sentovich

One Stop Systems, Inc. has appointed Kimberly Sentovich to its board of directors. Sentovich currently serves as a consultant to private equity portfolio companies and retailers in the U.S. and Canada. Prior, she was senior vice president of operations at Torrid and served as executive vice president of stores and logistics for Gymboree.

“I’m excited to join OSS at this pivotal stage of its growth and as it embarks on a new year,” commented Sentovich, “and especially after a successful IPO last year that supported two significant acquisitions that helped to expand its market and geographic reach. I hope to offer perspectives and insights from my past experiences in terms of building and scaling teams and business processes.”

Jorge Titinger

Panasas has announced that Jorge Titinger is joining its board of directors. Titinger is CEO and founder of Titinger Consulting and the former CEO of SGI. Prior to his role at SGI, Titinger served as COO and then president and CEO of Verigy, Ltd. He has held senior executive roles at KLA-Tencor Corporation, Applied Materials and Insync Systems.

“The PanFS portable parallel filesystem is a game changer for the HPC industry, opening new opportunities with customers who are frustrated with the complexities of open source filesystem solutions,” said Titinger. “The ease of use of PanFS combined with the performance and cost efficiency of an integrated ActiveStor or OEM-certified deployment, will make it a highly attractive value proposition for commercial and traditional HPC applications alike.”

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.