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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!
D-Wave Systems Inc. announced the appointment of Dr. Alan Baratz to the role of chief executive officer (CEO). In 2017, Baratz joined D-Wave serving as the chief product officer and executive vice president of research and development. Baratz is credited for driving the development, delivery, and support of all of D-Wave’s products, technologies, and applications in recent years. He has held executive positions at Symphony, Avaya, Cisco, and IBM. He served as CEO and president of Versata, Zaplet, and NeoPath Networks, and as a managing director at Warburg Pincus LLC.
“I joined D-Wave to bring quantum computing technology to the enterprise. Now more than ever, I am convinced that making practical quantum computing available to forward-thinking businesses and emerging quantum developers through the cloud is central to jumpstarting the broad development of in-production quantum applications,” Baratz said. “As I assume the CEO role, I’ll focus on expanding the early beachheads for quantum computing that exist in manufacturing, mobility, new materials creation, and financial services into real value for our customers. I am honored to take over the leadership of the company and work together with the D-Wave team as we begin to deliver real business results with our quantum computers.”
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin selected Bill Barth to lead the Future Technologies group, which will focus on technology decisions around the center’s High Performance Computing (HPC) systems and the Frontera Phase 2 leadership-class computing facility. In 2003, Barth started working at TACC as a graduate student and joined as a full-time researcher after he received his Ph.D. He was co-principal investigator (PI) on the Stampede, Stampede2, and Lonestar4 systems. He also serves as PI on several National Science Foundation grants related to TACC Stats, MPI optimization, and XDMOD integration. TACC will recruit to build the new Future Technologies group.
“I’m excited to lead TACC’s efforts to identify the technologies and architectures that will advance science and engineering over the coming decade,” Barth said. “This is an interesting time in HPC, and the future systems we deploy will enhance the productivity of thousands of researchers nationwide.”
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin promoted John Cazes to director of the High Performance Computing (HPC) group. In this position, he will oversee a team of 20 with responsibilities for improving application performance, providing frontline support, predicting performance on future architectures, and training the next generation of scientists and engineers. Cazes joined TACC in 2005 as the onsite representative for climate, weather, and ocean for the Department of Defense’s Programming Environment and Training (PET) program. He has served in the HPC group for his entire time at TACC and was most recently named deputy director. Cazes replaces Bill Barth, who has served as TACC’s director of HPC for more than a decade.
“I’ve spent the past 20 years of my professional career working with researchers to enable greater performance on our HPC resources and evaluating advanced technologies and techniques,” Cazes said. “I look forward to leading the HPC group at TACC to ensure that we continue to provide a high level of support and the most productive resources available to the open science community.”
Quantum Corp. announced that Rebecca Jacoby joined the company’s Board of Directors. She will serve on the Board’s Audit Committee and Leadership and Compensation Committee. She served as senior vice president (SVP) of Operations at Cisco Systems Inc. Jacoby held the position of CIO for eight years and retired from Cisco in 2018 after more than 22 years of service. She also oversaw various functions, including IT, supply chain, security and trust, global procurement and employee services, and workplace resources.
“With the restatement completed and new governance practices now in place, and with a sharper focus on innovation and profitable sales, Quantum has been on a roll with a brisk pace of new product development,” Jacoby said. “This is a particularly exciting time to join Quantum’s Board, and I look forward to applying my experience to help Quantum grow and realize its true potential.”
Dr. Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan
President Donald J. Trump nominated Dr. Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan to serve as the 15th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Since 2014, Panchanathan has been a member of the National Science Board. Currently, Panchanathan leads the knowledge enterprise development at Arizona State University (ASU), which advances research, innovation, strategic partnerships, entrepreneurship, and global and economic development. Panchanathan would succeed France Córdova when her six-year term as NSF director ends in 2020.
Panchanathan is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also the Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Society of Optical Engineering (SPIE). He is currently serving as the Chair-Elect in the Council on Research (CoR) within the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU).
ZutaCore announced Dr. Tim Shedd as the new director of product management. Shedd has thermal sciences and engineering experience and holds 13 patents. He also launched Ebullient Inc. and held academic positions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Florida Polytechnic University.
“I appreciate the team’s confidence in my ability to provide cross-functional leadership to help guide ZutaCore from product launch through to securing a solid foothold in the global data center thermal management market,” Shedd said. “I know what it takes to cool the world’s fastest, most demanding computing, and ZutaCore’s HyperCool2 system has the potential to exceed customer expectations by overcoming hurdles of traditional air and water solutions. Hyperscale, edge and HPC applications will benefit from industry-leading low chip to ambient temperature differences and extreme package heat load capabilities, all at impressively low TCO.”
Navin Shenoy
Intel’s Navin Shenoy was promoted to the role of executive vice president and general manager of the Data Platforms Group at Intel Corp. He will focus on solutions that are driving transformation across a range of use cases, including cloud computing, virtualization of network infrastructure, and the adoption of artificial intelligence. Before his current role, Shenoy served as general manager of the company’s Client Computing Group. In that position, he was responsible for profit and loss, business strategy, and product development across notebooks, desktops, tablets, 2-in-1 devices, and home gateways.
Shenoy joined Intel in 1995. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and completed the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University. Early in his Intel career, Shenoy served as general manager for Intel Asia Pacific, where he led sales, marketing, and overall adoption of Intel products in the region. Shenoy also previously held leadership roles in Intel’s PC and tablet business units and the CEO’s office, including three years as chief-of-staff and technical assistant to former Intel president and CEO Paul Otellini.
Georgia (Gina) Tourassi was appointed as director of the National Center for Computational Sciences, a division of the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Tourassi first joined ORNL in 2011 in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division as the founding director of the ORNL Health Data Sciences Institute and most recently served as the group leader of ORNL’s Biomedical Sciences, Engineering, and Computing Group.
Under Tourassi’s leadership, BSEC grew from five to 23 staff members in only three years. The diversity and talent of the team helped position ORNL as a visionary player in applied computational sciences. With OLCF Program Director Buddy Bland and OLCF-5 Project Director Justin Whitt, Tourassi will lead the division as it continues to prepare for installation and the 2021 launch of Frontier, one of America’s first Exascale supercomputers.
CoolIT Systems announced that Darko Ulakovic joined the company as executive vice president of Manufacturing and Supply Chain. Before CoolIT Systems, Ulakovic was president of AVL Group, charged with overseeing the company’s strategic development and introducing and implementing solutions to drive efficiency and productivity that supported the company’s financial, operational goals, and objectives. Before AVL, Ulakovic held executive roles at Tesco Corp. leading the Product Business line, exploring new market share opportunities, and growing the manufacturing capabilities.
“I am thrilled to join CoolIT at this point in the company’s growth,” Ulakovic said. “CoolIT has proven to be a key partner for server OEMs around the world who continue trusting us to cool their leading-edge server designs.”
Green Revolution Cooling (GRC) promoted Dhruv Varma to lead operations and serve as Director of Business Development, APAC, as the company expands its footprint in New Delhi, India. Varma, who is relocating from the U.S. to New Delhi, previously served as GRC’s Director of Product Marketing. Before joining GRC in 2014, he served on Yahoo’s Data Center Energy and Sustainability team, where he helped identify over $6 million in operational cost savings and an annual reduction of 2,500 metric tons of CO2e.
“I look forward to establishing our offices in India and expanding GRC’s infrastructure to meet the needs of the APAC Region,” Varma said. “GRC is committed to reducing data center complexity and energy consumption while meeting the needs for the increasing power of today’s computing environments.”
2019 ACM Fellows
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) named 58 ACM Fellows for wide-ranging and fundamental contributions in areas including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, combating cybercrime, quantum computing, and wireless networking. The accomplishments of the 2019 ACM Fellows underpin the technologies that define the digital age and impact the public’s professional and personal lives. ACM Fellows comprise an elite group that represents less than 1% of the Association’s global membership. The 2019 Fellows hail from universities, companies and research centers in Australia, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.
ACM will formally recognize its 2019 Fellows at the annual Awards Banquet that will be held in San Francisco on June 20, 2020. To see the full list of the 2019 Fellows, click here.
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.
