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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!
Paul Abston, head of the HPC Infrastructure Operations Group of the National Center for Computational Sciences and manager of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s datacenter, was named datacenter manager of the year for 2023. The award is sponsored by Data Center World, a conference for datacenter facilities and IT professionals and it recognizes exceptional leaders in the field nominated by their peers.
“It’s an honor,” Abston said. “I’m just proud to have so many great employees who work so hard to keep the datacenter running.”
Mohammad Alizadeh from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is the recipient of the 2022 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award for pioneering and impactful contributions to datacenter networks.
Alizadeh has fundamentally advanced how datacenters communicate efficiently in transporting data. One of his key contributions is the control of datacenter network congestion and packet loss with a groundbreaking Data Center Transport Control Protocol (DCTCP). DCTCP significantly increases performance in datacenter environments where state-of-the-art TCP protocols fall short.
Jean Allain, head of the Ken and Mary Alice Lindquist Department of Nuclear Engineering at Penn State, was appointed associate director for fusion energy sciences (FES) within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science. Allain will serve as an adviser to DOE senior leadership on fundamental scientific topics and initiatives supported by the FES program.
“It is both a blessing and honor to be able to serve my country in this capacity, as this decade is arguably one of the most consequential for nuclear energy, and nuclear fusion plays a critical role in the delivery of a diverse and versatile resource of nuclear technologies at the disposal of our nation and the world,” said Allain. “The chance to lead the FES and bring the most emergent scientific discoveries in plasma physics and fusion technology to the forefront of energy transition is one of the most exciting aspects of this opportunity.”
Niels Anderskouv and Tim Stone
Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries (GF) appointed Niels Anderskouv as its chief business officer. Anderskouv will be responsible for driving GF’s business strategy, including product and technology roadmap, sales, and go-to-market execution. He joined GF after serving as senior vice president and executive officer at Texas Instruments.
In addition, GlobalFoundries appointed Tim Stone as the company’s chief financial officer. Stone will focus on accelerating GlobalFoundries’ financial performance. He brings over 20 years of experience to the company, including serving as CFO for the AWS and Devices businesses at Amazon.
Ashley Barker, section head of operations at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was named as the deputy director of ORNL’s next-generation supercomputer project, OLCF-6. Part of Barker’s responsibilities will be to work with OLCF project teams throughout the process and track their progress regarding schedule, scope, and budget.
“I’ve been part of the OLCF projects to procure and deploy systems such as Titan, Summit and more recently Frontier. These projects take many years to plan and execute and involve many people across organizations with vastly different expertise,” Barker said. “I’ve had the opportunity to be mentored by and learn from incredible leaders, such as Buddy Bland, Kathlyn Boudwin, Justin Whitt, Terri Quinn, Katie Antypas and Susan Coghlan, who have led these vastly complex projects for DOE.”
SiPearl appointed Vivian Blanchard as its vice president of hardware research and development. Blanchard’s career to date has been in research and development working for Bull and Atos in the computing domain and especially HPC.
He started his career as a physical design engineer, then held several positions in logical design, servers and ASIC architecture. In 2010, he took up the responsibility of Atos’ ASIC Research and Development department. In this capacity, Blanchard worked with Philippe Notton, CEO and founder of SiPearl, and Ying Chih-Yang, CTO, toward the launch of the European Processor Initiative consortium project which incubated SiPearl.
Michael Caspersen, Ramesh Jain, Joseph Konstan, and Jelani Nelson
Michael Caspersen, managing director of It-vest and honorary professor from Aarhus University, received the Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award for his contributions to computer science education research, his policy work at the national and international levels to advance the teaching of informatics for all, and his outstanding service to the computing education community.
Ramesh Jain, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, received the ACM Distinguished Service Award for establishing the ACM Special Interest Group on Multimedia Systems, and for outstanding leadership and sustained services to ACM and the computing community for the past four decades.
Joseph Konstan, a professor at the University of Minnesota, received the Outstanding Contribution to ACM Award for 25 years of dedicated service and leadership in support of ACM’s mission and operation, and the advancement of ACM’s research, education, and practitioner communities.
Jelani Nelson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, received the ACM Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics for founding and developing AddisCoder, a nonprofit organization that teaches programming to underserved students from all over Ethiopia. AddisCoder has led many students to higher education and successful careers.
Torborg Chetkovich
atNorth, the Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Torborg Chetkovich to its board of directors. Torborg currently holds the position of managing director at Private Infrastructure Europe at Partners Group, a global private markets firm and majority owner of atNorth, on behalf of its clients.
“I am delighted to join the atNorth Board of Directors at this time of significant growth for the business and the industry as a whole,” said Chetkovich. “As the demand for high performance datacenter solutions continues to grow, it is essential that businesses are met with scalable offerings that are truly sustainable and future proof. I look forward to collaborating with atNorth’s leadership team and my board colleagues to guide the success of the business at this pivotal time”.
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) appointed Mercè Crosas to lead the Center’s new Computational Social Sciences program. Crosas will be responsible for promoting research in this field by harnessing the potential of supercomputing, artificial intelligence, and big data analysis.
Crosas joined BSC from Harvard University in the United States, where she was head of research data management and head of the office of data science and technology at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science.
Steven Cundiff, the Harrison M. Randall Collegiate Professor of Physics, and Mack Kira, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will serve as co-directors of the Quantum Research Institute at the University of Michigan.
Combined, Cundiff Kira authored multiple books and more than 300 scholarly publications on semiconductor quantum science and technology. They also played leading roles in the 2022 formation of the Midwest Quantum Collaboratory, which has increased collaboration among quantum researchers at U-M, Michigan State University, and Purdue University.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Lori Diachin has been named director of the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP), a position she starts on June 1. Diachin currently serves as the principal deputy associate director for LLNL’s Computing Directorate and has served as ECP’s deputy director since 2018.
“I feel incredibly honored and humbled to be selected for this role; it is the largest computing project in DOE history and will have a tremendous impact on computational science for the next decade and beyond,” Diachin said. “We are eager and excited to show the success and impact that the applications and software technologies we have developed for the exascale systems will have on problems of national importance.”
Computing pioneer Jack Dongarra was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Dongarra is an R&D staff member in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Computer Science and Mathematics Division and professor emeritus at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he recently retired as founding director of UT’s Innovative Computing Laboratory.
“Throughout his career, Jack has made contributions that have forever altered the computing community and multiple institutions, including ORNL,” said Jeff Smith, ORNL interim director. “This is an incredible, well-deserved achievement, and we are proud to call Jack one of our own.”
Marianne Francois and Michael Pettes
Marianne Francois and Michael Pettes were named fellows in the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Francois, the head of the Theoretical division, was nominated for significant contributions to research and leadership. Francois is considered an expert in computational multiphase flow, heat transfer, materials processing and associated numerical methods.
Pettes is a scientist and deputy group leader at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies. He was recognized for his contributions to strain and defect engineering as well as service and leadership in mechanical engineering. His contributions focus on engineering materials to impart new functionalities relevant to applications in energy, optical communications and mechanical performance.
Maheen Hamid and Michael Lercel
SEMI appointed Maheen Hamid and Michael Lercel to the SEMI North America Advisory Board. Hamid, co-founder, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of Breker Verification Systems, oversees the company’s operational growth as it moves from startup to established software supplier. She drives the company’s strategic direction, corporate communications and branding.
Michael Lercel, senior director of global strategic marketing at ASML, guides corporate strategy. He joined ASML in 2015 and brings a background in semiconductor manufacturing. He helped develop a number of next-generation lithography techniques and was involved in pioneering EUV work in 1998.
CMD-IT named Dr. Charles Isbell as the 2023 recipient of the Richard A. Tapia Achievement Award for Scientific Scholarship, Civic Science, and Diversifying Computing. Isbell is currently the John P. Imlay Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech.
Isbell will be joining the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s leadership team as the next Provost this fall. Isbell has contributed to broadening participation in computing, including serving as the founding executive director for the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing.
Dipti Jasrasaria, a Columbia University postdoctoral research scientist and a 2018-2022 Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship recipient, has been selected as the 2023 Frederick A. Howes Scholar in Computational Science.
In selecting Jasrasaria, a judging panel cited “both her outstanding research achievements and demonstrated leadership and character,” noting that as a University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. student, she helped develop a five-day boot camp for incoming graduate students to revisit math concepts they’d previously studied or to learn about ones they hadn’t. The program is now a chemistry department staple.
Cornelis Networks, the provider of intelligent, high-performance networking solutions, appointed David Joseph as its chief financial officer. Joseph will be responsible for expanding the global financial, administrative, and operational functions to support this phase of growth. He will also oversee the company’s HR and legal functions.
“AI is a technology disruptor akin to the Internet that can’t scale without the performance, reduced latency, and processing power that Cornelis Networks interconnects bring to the market,” said Joseph. “Further driving the company’s success is a visionary leadership team that I am honored to join as we continue to support our customers in achieving their objectives.”
Q-CTRL, a developer of quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, appointed Dave Kielpinski as its principal quantum control scientist. Kielpinski’s background and expertise will help expand the range of hardware platforms supported by Q-CTRL’s software, building on the company’s track record of validation on real quantum computers.
“I am excited to join the Q-CTRL team because the future is bright for the company and the entire quantum tech industry. We are going to see a major change in how quantum is perceived by the wider community as quantum hardware takes over certain key computing tasks,” said Kielpinski. “Exactly when that happens will be down to both hardware improvements and, just as importantly, the ability to extract useful performance from that hardware through software. The second part is where Q-CTRL comes in.”
One Stop Systems, Inc. (OSS), a provider of AI transportable compute and storage solutions, appointed Michael Knowles as its new president and chief executive officer. Knowles has held executive leadership positions at several defense contractors, including Cubic Corp.
Knowles said, “I’m excited to build on the inspiring AI product suite, driving growth in both defense and commercial markets and creating a powerful business model. OSS has the foundations for a team, products, and innovation mindset to succeed in the global marketplace and accelerate greater pipeline and business growth.”
Doug Kothe
Doug Kothe, associate laboratory director of the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and director at the Exascale Computing Project, will join the Advanced Science and Technology Division at Sandia National Laboratories as its chief research officer and associate labs director. His start date is June 5th.
Kothe brings to the Lab 35 years of experience in conducting and leading applied R&D in computational science applications designed to simulate complex physical phenomena in the energy, defense, and manufacturing sectors. Prior to his position with the ECP, Kothe was deputy associate laboratory director of the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at ORNL.
Mary Krakauer
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. appointed Mary Louise Krakauer as the chair of the board of directors. Krakauer also serves as a director of Mercury Systems, Inc. and Proterra Inc. Krakauer retired as executive vice president, chief information officer of Dell Corp. in January 2017. Prior to that, she served in various executive positions at EMC Corp.
“Cadence’s growth has been phenomenal over the past several years, and I’m ready to explore new market opportunities and drive strategic initiatives to further advance the company’s position in the computational software industry,” said Krakauer. “I share Anirudh’s passion for innovation and customer success, and I look forward to collaborating with Anirudh and the executive team to build upon Cadence’s strong foundation and take the company to new heights.”
Nancy Makri
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign chemistry professor Nancy Makri has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Makri is among 120 members and 23 international members elected this year to recognize their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
Makri is recognized for her work in theoretical quantum dynamics and numerical path integral simulations of quantum mechanical processes. She is the Edward William and Jane Marr Gutgsell Chair, a professor in chemistry and physics, a member of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Institute and an affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
Daren Mancini
Submer, immersion cooling solutions provider, appointed Daren Mancini as its senior vice president of sales. Mancini brings decades of experience in marketing, sales management, and technology having held leadership positions at BT, Ericsson, Microsoft, HPE, and Lumen.
“The opportunity ahead for Submer is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster, and continue to transform and evolve our relevance in the future of datacenters, that simply make sense,” Mancini said. “A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring the innovation of Submer to our customers more clearly and quickly.”
The Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) appointed Simon McIntosh-Smith, an HPC professor from the University of Bristol, as the company’s principal scientist. McIntosh-Smith brings a background of commercial experience and theoretical knowledge in high performance and scientific computing, computing architectures, and many-core and multi-core techniques.
“I am deeply honored to take on this important advisory role at NAG”, said McIntosh-Smith, “NAG has been involved in the frontiers of computation since the 1970s and continues to play a significant role in the international HPC community. NAG has exciting ambitions for the future, and I am excited to be able to contribute to their success.”
Iceotope Technologies Limited (Iceotope), a provider of precision liquid cooling technology solutions, appointed Kelley Mullick as its vice president for technology advancement and alliances. Mullick joins the company from Intel Corp., where she worked in product management and strategy for the datacenter and AI group
Mullick said. “Today, existing challenges to mitigate against the climate emergency are joined by the technological expedients of AI applications such as ChatGPT. These compute-intensive operations need the support of compute-intensive infrastructure. The limitations and inefficiencies of air cooling are well known… When I appraised Iceotope’s technology, I saw complete differentiation from anything else in the market. In addition to all the benefits of liquid cooling, it offers high levels of heat reuse, almost completely eliminates the use of water, and offers greater compute density and scalability than other solutions like cold-plate and tank immersion. It is the technology of the future that I want to invest my calories in.”
The 2023 Achievement Award in High Performance Distributed Computing has been awarded to Dr. Manish Parashar by the ACM International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC) for his work in high performance parallel and distributed computational methods, data management, in-situ computing, and global leadership in cyberinfrastructure and translational computer science.
Dr. Parashar currently holds the position of Director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute, Chair in Computational Science and Engineering, and Professor at the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Additionally, he serves as the Director of the Office of Advanced Cyber Infrastructure at the National Science Foundation.
Juan Restrepo, a distinguished researcher and head of the Mathematics in Computation section at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was named vice chair of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ new Activity Group on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
“My main focus is on the innovation that diversity brings to research and to an organization,” said Restrepo. “When you have a diverse set of researchers, there’s consideration of things that would otherwise not be thought of as important to our social welfare, and it’s also a great way to find synergistic solutions to the multidisciplinary problems we’re starting to grapple with in modern science.”
Bara Saadah, a Carle Illinois College of Medicine student, was awarded the 2023 Fiddler Innovation Fellowship by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Saadah and co-founder Caywin Zhuang created an anti-fatigue vest that uses multiple sensors to measure a surgeon’s posture in real time and provides feedback, alerting them to correct any improper posture that may lead to fatigue.
“I am honored to be the recipient of the Fiddler Innovation Fellowship and I am excited about the impact it will have on my work in innovation,” Saadah said. “With this award, I plan to continue developing the anti-fatigue vest with my co-founder Caywin Zhuang, which reduces neck, back and shoulder pain of surgeons through posture correction and physical support. We aim to refine our innovation and create a product that addresses the needs of surgeons while promoting their well-being.”
Roger Schnüriger
Stäubli, a leader in industrial and mechatronic solutions, has appointed Roger Schnüriger as its new Group Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and member of the Group Executive Committee. Stäubli’s start date is June 1, 2023. He holds an Executive MBA from London Business School and advanced diplomas in Treasury, Risk and Corporate Finance.
“We are fortunate to have found in Roger Schnüriger such a valuable contributor to the further implementation of our business strategy, and we look forward to fostering the expansion of the entire Stäubli Group together,” said Gerald Vogt, CEO.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Matt Sieger was named the project director for the OLCF-6 effort, to bring up the next machine after OLCF-5 (better known now as Frontier). Sieger will focus on external relationships with technology vendors, stakeholders from the lab and DOE, as well as science users. As the former deputy director for the OLCF-5 project, Sieger focused on the internal operations of the project and tracking the performance of the schedule and budget.
“This project is exciting because we will be building something even more capable and energy efficient than Frontier, with technologies that will push the edge of what’s possible,” Sieger said. “Fortunately, we have a team at ORNL that is the best in the world at what they do. It’s an incredible honor to be able to add to the innovative supercomputing tradition that OLCF has built.”
The ACCESS RP Forum, an advanced computing and data resource supported by the National Science Foundation, elected Eva Siegmann from Stony Brook University as its RP Forum Chair. Siegmann is the lead research scientist of the Ookami project, the associate director Arm HPC user group, and a reviewer and panelist for NSF. She has over a decade of experience in scientific computing.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as the chair of the resource provider forum and am excited to work with our talented and passionate members to advance the mission of ACCESS,” Siegmann said.
ISC High Performance appointed Michela Taufer as the ISC 2024 Program Chair. Taufer currently serves as the Jack Dongarra Professor of High Performance Computing in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
“At this year’s conference, my colleague, John Shalf challenged the community to think beyond exascale,” Taufer said. “We find ourselves at a crossroads, and my vision for the 2024 conference is to engage the ISC community to propose a bold roadmap to reinvent HPC. The event slogan for 2024 is Reinventing HPC, and we at ISC are ready to take over the challenge and deliver transformative and inclusive solutions.”
ALCF 2023–2024 User Advisory Council
The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at Argonne National Laboratory, recently appointed six new members to its 2023–2024 User Advisory Council. Read more about the six new members here.
This council is an advisory body and makes recommendations on current and future ALCF policies and services. Council members are appointed by ALCF’s director and individually hold expertise in the tasks and requirements of specific applications or domain areas. Members are all current or former ALCF users and collectively represent ALCF’s scientific user community.
2023-2025 ESD Alliance Governing Council
The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, announced the election of its governing council for the 2023-2025 term. New to the governing council are Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight, and John Lee, general manager and vice president at Ansys.
“It’s a pleasure to announce the results of our Governing Council election,” said Bob Smith, executive director of the ESD Alliance. “We welcome returning and new council members and thank outgoing members Dean Drako of IC Manage and industry veteran and former ESD Alliance chair Simon Segars for their many years of service to the ESD Alliance.”
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.
