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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!
Altair appointed Shekar Ayyar to its board of directors. Most recently, Ayyar is currently the chief executive officer of AdMY Technologies Inc. and a venture partner with NTTVC. Ayyar served as executive vice president and general manager for VMware’s telco and edge cloud business unit and previously held other leadership positions at VMWare.
“I look forward to joining Altair’s board of directors. Altair is poised for exceptional growth propelled by its best-in-class, robust, scalable, and technically differentiated platform that brings together the power of simulation, HPC, and AI,” said Ayyar. “Its ability to leverage software and cloud technology combined with its entrepreneurial culture is a great asset.”
Rosa Badia
The Association for Computing Machine elected Rosa M. Badia as its ACM Europe councilor. Badia is the workflows and distributed computing group manager at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center and coordinator of the EuroHPC project eFlows4HPC. The ACM Europe Council was created by ACM to recognize and support European ACM members and activities.
Badia said she is very satisfied with the appointment and she aims to “expand the presence of Europe (and Spain) within ACM and promote European candidates in ACM bodies and degrees. I would also like to contribute to increasing the visibility of women in the area of information technology, trying to improve their representation”
SiPearl, a company that is designing a high-performance, low-power microprocessor for the European exascale supercomputer, welcomed Jean-Marc Denis as its chief strategy officer. Denis will be responsible for creating centers of excellence for target customers to optimize specific applications, including meteorology, climatology, energy management, epidemiology, fluid mechanics, etc.
Before joining SiPearl, Denis was head of the strategy, big data and security at Atos. He also held the role of head of HPC at Bull and stayed with the company after its acquisition by Atos.
Andrea Goldsmith
Intel appointed Dr. Andrea Goldsmith its board of directors. Goldsmith, who is the dean of engineering and applied science and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton University, will serve as an independent director.
“I’m thrilled to be joining Intel’s board of directors at such an exciting time for the company. The bold strategy that Pat Gelsinger has laid out opens up the door to seemingly limitless possibilities for Intel,” said Goldsmith. “I look forward to bringing my knowledge of wireless networking technology to help shape the company’s future.”
The U.S. Senate confirmed former director of Sandia National Laboratories Jill Hruby to serve as the undersecretary for the Nuclear Security, and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration at the U.S. Department of Energy. Hruby is a mechanical engineer who joined the Laboratories as a member of the technical staff in 1983 and retired as the Laboratories director in 2017 after a distinguished 34-year career.
Hruby was the first woman to lead a national security lab. Since her retirement, Hruby served as the inaugural Sam Nunn Distinguished Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative from 2018-2019. In addition, she has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the National Nuclear Security Administration Defense Programs Advisory Committee, and the National Academy of Science Committee for International Security and Arms Control.
Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, was presented the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award by Asian American Engineer of the Year, an annual event that recognizes outstanding Asian American scientists, engineers and role models. Huang was recognized for his contributions as “a visionary and innovator in parallel computing technology that accelerates the realization of AI computing.”
“It is strange to accept a lifetime achievement award because I feel like I’m just getting started – and NVIDIA indeed is,” Huang said. “Still, I’m grateful and deeply honored to receive this award, which I share with my colleagues at NVIDIA.”
Zapata Computing, an enterprise software company for quantum solutions, appointed former senior vice president of Google Jeff Huber to its board of directors. Huber is also the founding chief executive officer of GRAIL, a cancer screening company.
“Quantum computing will follow artificial intelligence as the second revolutionary technology in the 21st century,” said Huber. “There is so much data in Industry that, if properly harnessed, could solve the most complex problems that affect the human experience, from how we move and live on the planet, to our financial markets and supply chains. Zapata is the leader in developing the quantum-classical applications that will unlock the untapped value of this data. The team is already working alongside some of the world’s biggest organizations to build production-ready quantum applications and is poised to take advantage of tomorrow’s more powerful quantum devices.”
Amy Love
SambaNova Systems, a provider of software, hardware and services that run artificial intelligence applications, appointed Amy Love as its chief marketing officer. Love comes to the company from Pavilion Data Systems, where she served as CMO. She is a board member of the Girl Scouts of Northern California and a member of the board of advisors in the department of marketing at the University of San Francisco School of Management.
“I am honored to join the highly-accomplished and committed team at SambaNova. The immense opportunity for SambaNova to have a material and lasting impact on the global technology industry is unmatched,” Love said. “Together, we are forging a new category of technology. I am thrilled to join the organization at a time when AI is catapulting organizations forward to achieve unmatched business outcomes leveraging the ease of SambaNova’s full solution that yields results in days, not years.”
The University of Hawaiʻi Vanguard Center of High Performance Computing on Maui welcomed Tiare K. Martin as its new executive director. Martin has more than 20 years of engineering experience, including more than 15 years managing software projects, programs, and resources.
“I am honored to be selected for this role and look forward to building on the decades of innovation and technology advancement accomplished by the center,” said Martin. “I know how important our work is for national defense and for Hawaiʻi’s high-tech sector. I am up for the challenge.”
The U.S. National Science Foundation appointed Karen Marrongelle as its chief operating officer. Marrongelle has led the NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources since 2018. Before joining NSF, she served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University, overseeing 24 departments and programs.
“This is an incredibly exciting time to be part of NSF. I am honored to be selected for the role of COO, to work with the NSF Director and contribute to implementing his vision for the agency,” said Marrongelle. “NSF is poised for unprecedented growth and impact in all areas of science and STEM education, and I am looking forward to helping lead the agency into this next phase of our evolution and continue work with the director to create pathways to success for a STEM workforce reflective of the U.S. population. This is of national importance and greatly impacts our ability to advance the frontiers of research into the future.”
Eric Monchalin was elected to serve as the chairman of the board of the European Processor Initiative. Monchalin is the vice president of the head of the machine intelligence division at Atos, where he is responsible for solidifying new technological and business directions for the big data and security global business line.
As chairman of the board, Monchalin will be responsible for leading 28 partners from 10 countries in their efforts to design and implement a roadmap for a new family of low-power European processors.
Classiq Technologies appointed Tal Mor and Robert Wille to its newly created technical advisory board. Mor, a professor of computer science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, is a member of the executive committee of the Technion’s Helen Diller Quantum Center.
Wille is a professor at the Johannes Kepler University Linz in Austria and he is the head of the Institute for Integrated Circuits. He is also the chief scientific officer at the Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH in Austria.
Wade Shen
SambaNova Systems, a company offering advanced software, hardware and services to run artificial intelligence applications, welcomed Wade Shen to its advisory board. Shen brings more than 20 years of experience in the AI industry, including his current role as the co-founder and chief program officer of Actuate, a nonprofit dedicated to R&D to solve today’s societal challenges. He has also led a portfolio of AI and machine learning programs at the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
“Today, we stand at a critical junction with innovations in AI and ML technology that will impact our world like never before,” Shen said. “I am thrilled to join an AI company on the leading edge of such profound transformation. With unparalleled hardware and software — and the ability to jump-start enterprise-wide initiatives overnight — SambaNova is truly pushing AI into the future.”
Shang-Hua Teng and Daniel Spielman
The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory named Shang-Hua Teng and Daniel A. Spielman as the recipients of the Symposium on Theory of Computing Test of Time Award.
Teng from the University of Southern California Viturbi and Spielman from Yale University were recognized for their paper on smoothed analysis of algorithms originally presented at the STOC conference in 2001. In the paradigm-shifting paper, “Smoothed analysis of algorithms: why the simplex algorithm usually takes polynomial time,” Teng and Spielman use the concept of smoothed analysis to give a more realistic understanding of an algorithm’s performance, such as its running time.
Bob Turner and Sudarshan Yadav
Lightmatter, the leader in photonic computing, appointed Bob Turner as its vice president of sales and Sudarshan Yadav as its head of product. Turner, who is the former director of sales in the Central and Eastern United States regions at Graphcore, will lead Lightmatter’s sales and technical support teams to sell, provide customer support and maximize long-term revenue growth of Lightmatter hardware and software photonic compute solutions.
As head of product, Yadav will oversee Lightmatter’s product management team, and work towards the success of its AI accelerator early access program. Yadav brings product management experience to Lightmatter, with prior product leadership roles at Uber and Microsoft.
Rebecca Weekly, vice president, general manager and senior principal engineer of hyperscale strategy and execution at Intel, has been announced as the new chair and president of the board of directors of the Open Compute Project Foundation. Weekly replaces Mark Roenigk, head of hardware engineering at Facebook, who served as chair for the past two years.
“Rebecca brings a wealth of technical expertise, leadership, and perspective to this role that will positively impact the Foundation as we kick off the next decade of OCP,” said Roenigk.
IBM President Jim Whitehurst is stepping down from his role as President and will transition to the role of senior advisor to the executive leadership team. Whitehurst was appointed president of IBM in April 2020. Before his role as president, he spent over 12 years at Red Hat as its president and chief executive officer.
Whitehurst played a key role in the IBM and Red Hat integration. Before Red Hat, Whitehurst held the role of chief operating officer at Delta Airlines.
Chuck Whitten
Dell Technologies appointed Chuck Whitten as its co-chief operating officer. Whitten, who spent 22 years at Bain & Company, will join vice-chairman and co-COO Jeff Clarke and chairman and CEO Michael Dell to lead Dell’s next phase of growth.
“Coming off a record FY21 and first-quarter of FY22, we are growing and our opportunity is growing even faster,” said Clarke. “Chuck joins the company at a pivotal time to give us greater leadership capacity to cover more ground, assess more opportunities and speed decision making to best serve customers. As our top advisor, Chuck has been an integral part of the team for a long time working across strategy, transformation and operations. I couldn’t be happier to have him as co-COO to capture big growth opportunities across our portfolio as the world becomes more digital and data-driven.”
Dario Zamarian
Pavilion Data Systems, a data storage solutions provider, appointed Dario Zamarian as its chief executive officer. Zamarian has held multiple leadership positions, including as global vice president and worldwide general manager of enterprise systems and solutions at Dell. Before joining Pavilion, he was CEO of Space Systems/Loral, a company of Maxar.
“Pavilion’s current technology is unmatched, and its next-generation will create even more innovation that delivers unrivaled customer outcomes,” said Zamarian. “As artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data-driven requirements accelerate, Pavilion is best suited to meet the needs of organizations adapting to data-centric decision making. I’m excited to be joining a world-class team and accelerating the company forward.”
Dr. Rohit Zambre of the University of California, Irvine was selected as the recipient of the 2021 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation award. The ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing selected Zambre for his dissertation titled “Exascalable Communication for Modern Supercomputing.”
“I am grateful to SIGHPC for the recognition of my efforts,” said Zambre. “I hope supercomputing applications are able to benefit from the case studies in the dissertation and utilize the new high-speed multithreaded performance capabilities of MPI libraries.”
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign named 15 new Faculty Fellows for the 2021-22 academic school year. The NCSA Faculty Fellowship, a competitive program for faculty and researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides seed funding for new collaborations that include NCSA staff as integral contributors to the project. For the list of all the 2021-22 fellows, click here.
NERSC Annual High Performance Computing Achievement Awards
The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center named eight early-career scientists as the recipients of its annual High Performance Computing Achievement Awards. Four awardees were cited for high impact scientific achievement. Three scientists were recognized for their innovative use of high performance computing. The final recipient was honored for outstanding research by an undergraduate student. For a detailed list of all the award winners, 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.
