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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!
David Abramson, Jysoo Lee, and Francis Lee Bu Sung
The SupercomputingAsia 2022 Awards were presented at the SCA22 Awards Ceremony at the SupercomputingAsia 2022 hybrid conference in Singapore. Professor David Abramson from the University of Queensland in Australia received the SCA HPC Visionary Award. He was recognized for his contributions to the advancement of Australian and global HPC through the development of world-leading HPC research and distinguished service in international HPC communities.
Dr. Jysoo Lee from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia received the SCA HPC Leadership/Achievement Award. He was recognized for leading pioneering initiatives to develop South Korea’s HPC community and driving activities that have advanced international cooperation.
Assistant Professor Francis Lee Bu Sung from the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network received the SCA HPC Network Achievement Award for contributions toward promoting global research and interaction between HPC communities through the establishment and growth of both local and international research and education networks.
SambaNova Systems, an artificial intelligence systems company, named Peter Buckingham as its vice president of software engineering. Buckingham will be responsible for enabling the software team to capture the rapidly increasing transformational opportunity of AI in the public sector and the enterprise.
“I’m honored to join SambaNova’s leadership team. This is an incredible opportunity to create first-to-market software that accelerates AI adoption across the globe,” said Buckingham. “Seventy-two percent of enterprises struggle with AI adoption yet they desperately need to deploy it today. The software we’re creating at SambaNova will help them do that.”
GigaIO, creator of next-gen data center rack-scale architecture for artificial intelligence and high performance computing, appointed Dr. James Cuff as its chief of scientific computing and partnerships. Cuff will be responsible for helping design composable architectures that function at scale and provide the foundation for complex and challenging workloads.
“For years, while working at some of the largest and most complex global computational research institutes, I’ve noticed how critical the network is to the computer, but even more so to the modern computational scientist,” said Cuff. “Being able to rapidly and seamlessly create ‘impossible computer’ systems with low latency, highly performant networks and software is inordinately exciting to me, and I truly believe it will be just as exciting to our future customers and partners.”
Tina Declerck, department head at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center System, was promoted to NERSC deputy of operations. In her new role, Declerck will apply her years of experience managing compute systems at NERSC. As department head, Declerck was responsible for much of the operational work at NERSC.
“I am excited to take on the role of deputy for operations, which will allow me to interact more closely with the Lab as we grow our capabilities within NERSC,” said Declerck. “High performance computers use a lot of power and cooling infrastructure, and I look forward to continuing the work started by my predecessor, Jeff Broughton, to identify ways to improve our environmental impact, which has been a priority at NERSC. I hope my experience operating these systems can bring some ideas for more efficient computing practices, in addition to the facility improvements we are already working on.”
Jack Dongarra, an innovator in computational software development who holds joint appointments at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will receive the 2021 A.M. Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. The award recognizes his pioneering contributions to numerical algorithms and libraries that enabled high-performance computational software to keep pace with exponential hardware improvements for over four decades.
The award is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize of Computing.” Dongarra will receive a $1M prize with financial support provided by Google, Inc. It is named for Alan M. Turing, the British mathematician who articulated the mathematical foundation and limits of computing.
Diane Galbe, Stéphane Lhopiteau, Philippe Oliva, and Jean-Philippe Poirault
Atos appointed Diane Galbe as its chief strategy and sustainability officer and general secretary. Galbe will be also in charge of the mergers and acquisitions unit at Atos. She joined the company from Suez, where she spent 15 years in leading corporate and business positions, serving most recently as a member of the executive committee and senior executive vice president of the group in charge of strategy, transformation, and the global business unit smart and environmental solutions.
Stéphane Lhopiteau was appointed as Ato’s chief financial officer, effective on May 1. Lhopiteau brings a 30-year track record holding executive positions in corporate finance in tech and large project-driven industries, having notably served as CFO of Naval Group, deputy CFO of Thales and chief financial and legal officer of Areva/Orano.
In addition, Atos appointed Philippe Oliva as its chief commercial officer. Oliva brings a strong international experience in the digital sector, having spent almost 20 years at IBM where he has notably served as vice president for integrated technologies, then cloud services and hybrid services in North America. Philippe joined Atos from Eutelsat, were served as CCO for the past four years.
Lastly, Jean-Philippe Poirault was appointed as the company’s head of big data and security. Poirault is a seasoned executive of the telecom and cloud industries, with extensive experience in leading international management positions at Nokia (Alcatel Lucent), Ericsson and Amazon Web Services. Since March 2020, he has served as executive vice president of global head of telecom, media and technology at Atos.
Erwin Gianchandani
The U.S. National Science Foundation elected Erwin Gianchandani as its assistant director of technology, innovation, and partnerships at NSF, where he will be leading the newly established TIP (Technology, Innovation and Partnerships) directorate. Most recently, Gianchandani served as senior advisor for translation, innovation, and partnerships at NSF. He was responsible for developing plans for the new TIP directorate in collaboration with colleagues across government, industry, and academia.
Before joining NSF in 2012, Gianchandani was the first director of the computing community consortium, where he provided leadership to the computing research community in identifying and pursuing high-impact research directions such as health information technology and sustainable computing.
The HDF Group announced its board of directors has appointed Gerd Heber as its new executive director. The HDF Group is a software company dedicated to creating and supporting technologies to address many of today’s big data challenges. Heber, who has been The HDF Group’s Applications Architect since 2010, replaces Mike Folk upon his retirement. Folk will remain a member of the board of directors.
“HDF5 was conceived with pragmatism and change in mind, and that is why I believe it has remained relevant for 20+ years,” Heber said. “It is inspiring to see that in the last six months, HDF5 software was downloaded over 150,000 times from over 9,200 locations in 191 countries. However, the pace of change has picked up, the drivers of change are more manifold, and the economic model surrounding software technology is quite different today. There are interesting technical problems to be addressed, but that is the ‘easy part.’ The challenges to our organization and the HDF5 ecosystem at large are far more complex and will be my focus. Whatever the changes to come may be, I want our users and clients to know that our mission and values remain unchanged, in particular, our unwavering commitment to free open-source software.”
Applied Materials, Inc. has named Brice Hill as the company’s senior vice president and chief financial officer. Hill has 25 years of finance leadership experience within the semiconductor industry, most recently as CFO of Xilinx, Inc. through the period of acquisition by AMD, and previously at Intel Corp. where he was the finance leader of many of the company’s largest businesses and functions.
“The semiconductor industry has never been more important to the global economy, and I’m excited to join the team of Applied Materials whose technologies bring performance and innovation to the world’s leading chipmakers,” said Hill.
Luminous Computing appointed Michael Hochberg as its president. Hochberg will be responsible for running the engineering and operations aspects of the company. At the age of 19, he founded his first company (out of four), Simulant (acquired by Luxtera), which offered a purpose-built commercial tool for silicon photonics design.
“The vision for silicon photonics over the past 20 years has been to integrate this technology into computer architecture, and it wasn’t until recently that silicon photonics reached the point of maturity where it’s really possible,” said Hochberg. “We’re building a supercomputer that will bring world-changing capabilities to market, offering as much as a 1,000x step function in value to the end-user, and a dramatically improved user experience. If we are successful, the technology will have a huge commercial impact. We’re also excited about the applications to defense and national security needs. Making sure that the US has asymmetric access to the best technology in the world for AI is one of the key reasons that I joined Luminous.”
Sylabs, a provider of tools and services for performance-intensive container runtime technology, appointed Adam Hughes as its chief technology officer. Hughes will be responsible for Sylab’s technology strategy and relevant roadmaps.
“Turning complex challenges into simple, practically mundane tasks, is something that has always been a motivator,” said Hughes. “The idea of making people’s work and lives easier through the development of sophisticated but elegant systems really strikes at the core of what engineers do – and it’s what we’ve been doing as a community with Singularity. It’s easy to get lost in the code, but it’s important to remember that our work serves as part of the global software ecosystem that is advancing key areas of human life. The researchers and engineers who are using our tools are doing it as they work on some of the most complex challenges in science and technology. I’m proud to be part of Sylabs, the tip of the spear in the development of container science for technical workflows.”
Beatriz Paniagua and Berk Geveci
Kitware, Inc., a leader in developing custom software solutions using open source technology and advanced AI, appointed Beatriz Paniagua to its board of directors. Paniagua, Kitware’s assistant director of medical computing, brings to the board her vast experience in the medical computing industry. She can also contribute her unique perspectives having grown up in Extremadura, Spain, and as a woman in science with a leadership role within the company.
Berk Geveci also joined Kitware’s board of directors. He brings to the board his thorough knowledge of Kitware’s open source technologies and was one of the leading developers of ParaView and the Visualization Toolkit. As the senior director of scientific computing, he has been a long-time leader of Kitware’s scientific visualization efforts.
Antonio Peña
Antonio Peña, a senior researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, was elected as the principal investigator of the European Research Council proposal “Enabling Homomorphic Encryption of Deep Neural Network Models and Datasets in Production Environments.” HomE aims to put together HPC software optimization techniques and novel hardware designs, on top of persistent memory technology, to enable production-sized scenarios of homomorphically-encrypted deep learning.
“This ERC grant will bring deep-learning users the possibility of leveraging their jobs with confidence in a cloud provider, even when data protection policies are in place (e.g., GDPR),” Peña said. “I imagine a hospital being able to offload advanced cancer detection processes based on deep neural networks without concerns about the privacy of the medical records. It is going to be simply amazing.”
Rigetti Computing, Inc., a provider of hybrid quantum-classical computing systems, appointed Greg Peters as its chief revenue officer. Peters will be responsible for leading Rigetti’s global commercialization and growth efforts with the goal of expanding the company’s quantum computing as a service business in the public and private sectors.
“I am thrilled to be part of a world-class quantum computing team and excited about this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to work toward further commercializing the technology with the potential to solve the world’s most important and pressing problems,” said Peters.
IQM Quantum Computers appointed Dr. Sierk Poetting as the chairman of the board. Poetting is the chief operating officer at BioNTech SE, a next-generation immunotherapy company pioneering novel therapies for cancer and other serious diseases. He is experienced in the rapid transformation of fast-growing companies and globally expanding businesses.
“Technological advances and the increasing use of big data have disrupted many technologies, including healthcare, supporting the earlier detection of diseases and the development of more efficient treatments,” said Poetting. “IQM is an innovative company from Europe with regards to technological advancements in quantum computing, and I am looking forward to supporting them on their growth trajectory.
Riccardo Scarcelli, a principal research scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, was elected to the Fellow Grade of the Society of Automotive Engineers. This honor recognizes his work on optimizing combustion concepts for engines that run on alternative fuels, such as natural gas and hydrogen, via high-fidelity simulations.
“I am deeply thankful for this recognition and for the nomination from my peers,” said Scarcelli. “Having the opportunity to work together to contribute new knowledge that can shape how we think about and develop new mobility solutions is an honor.”
SiFive, Inc. appointed Nicole Singer as its senior vice president and chief human resources officer. Singer will be responsible for leading the company’s global HR organization. She joined SiFive from Synaptics, where she was SVP of worldwide human resources.
“I’m delighted to be part of the innovative team at SiFive, to help the company move onto the next stage of its journey in building a leading high-performance processor IP business,” said Singer. “SiFive is attracting talent at a fast pace to address the challenges of modern chip design and guiding that growth will be key to our success in executing our roadmap. I’m pleased to be joining at this pivotal time when every employee’s actions will have maximum impact.”
Chris Stansbury
Lumen Technologies appointed Chris Stansbury as its chief financial officer. Stansbury most recently served as senior vice president and CFO of Arrow Electronics, Inc., one of the world’s largest providers of technology products, services, and solutions. In his role at Arrow, Stansbury was responsible for leading the company’s global finance organization and served as a member of the company’s executive committee.
“This is an important time in Lumen’s transformation, and I look forward to continue building on the great work the team has underway,” said Stansbury. “Lumen has a strong financial foundation and significant opportunities for value creation. I am excited to be joining the company and can’t wait to get started.”
The Computing Research Association selected Katherine Yelick, the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, as the recipient of the 2022 CRA Distinguished Service Award for her outstanding and sustained service contributions to the computing research community.
Yelick’s affiliation with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which complements her role as a tenured professor at the University of California Berkeley, began with her appointment as a research scientist in 1996. She was appointed National Energy Research Scientific Computing Division Director in 2008. In 2010, she became Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences, the first computer scientist to serve in that role. She stepped down from that position at the end of 2019 and now assists the LBNL Director as senior advisor for Computing.
Bobby Yerramilli-Rao
GlobalFoundries Inc. appointed Bobby Yerramilli-Rao as an independent director of the company’s board of directors. Dr. Yerramilli-Rao is currently chief strategy officer and corporate vice president of corporate strategy at Microsoft, where he is responsible for developing and driving growth-oriented strategies.
Prior to joining Microsoft in 2020, Dr. Yerramilli-Rao served as co-founder and managing partner of Fusion Global Capital, which focused on accelerating the growth of emerging software and cloud computing companies. Before that, he served as corporate strategy director of Vodafone Group responsible for strategy globally and acquisitions related to digital services.
Check out HPCwire’s 2022 People to Watch 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.
