April 1, 2019

HPC Career Notes: April 2019 Edition

Oliver Peckham

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!


Nick Aretakis

Esperanto Technologies Inc. has announced that Nick Aretakis has been appointed as vice president of sales and marketing. Aretakis’ prior experience includes work with semiconductors, computing, telecom, networking, FinTech, IoT, and more. Prior to joining Esperanto, Arektas worked in business development at  the Silicon Valley Executive Network. Early, he served as VP of sales at Advanced Analogic Technology, Inc.

“I am delighted to join the Esperanto team, impressed with the leading-edge technology and high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions Esperanto will deliver in the exciting, rapidly growing artificial intelligence and machine learning markets,” commented Aretakis. “My focus will be developing sales channels, devising winning go-to-market strategies with highly talented marketing and technical teams while working closely with industry leading customers, and increasing profitable business growth.”

George S. Davis

Intel has announced that George S. Davis has been appointed as its executive vice president and chief financial officer. Davis joins Intel from Qualcomm, where he served as executive VP and CFO (since 2013). Prior to Qualcomm, he served for six years as CFO of Applied Materials. He received his MBA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Davis is filling the position after Bob Swan, former CFO, was named CEO.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the Intel team,” Davis said. “With demand for the analysis, transmission and storage of data growing faster than ever, no company in the world is better positioned to capitalize on that opportunity than Intel. It’s an exciting time for Intel, and I’m looking forward to playing a role in the company’s transformation.”

Bo Ewald

ColdQuanta, Inc. has announced that its board of directors has appointed Robert “Bo” Ewald as president and CEO. Ewald was previously president of Cray Research, CEO of Silicon Graphics, and president of D-Wave International. He has served on many government and industries committees, including the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, and been on the board of directors of both private and public quantities.

“We are just now coming to the end of the beginning of quantum technology; it is time to accelerate the productization of quantum-enabled instruments and systems,” said Ewald. “Governments around the world as well as academic and industry experts have recognized the economic and national security potential of quantum technology; witness the recent passage of the National Quantum Initiative in the U.S., along with similar programs in several other countries. With our expertise in cold-atom quantum devices and systems, ColdQuanta is uniquely positioned to deliver commercial technologies to customers looking for quantum capabilities in sensing, navigation, computing and communication.”

Alan D. George

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center has announced that Alan D. George, the Ruth and Howard Mickle Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and department chair and professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering, has been named its interim director. George succeeds Nick Nystrom, who served as interim of director of the PSC since 2017.

“Alan has a wealth of administrative and research experience that will enable him to lead the PSC during this critical time,” said Rebecca W. Doerge, the Glen de Vries Dean of the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. George is the founder and director of the National Science Foundation Center for Space, High-performance and Resilient Computing, a consortium of more than 30 industry, government and academic partners that work collaboratively to solve research challenges at the nexus of reconfigurable, high-performance and embedded computing.

Brian Grainger

StorMagic has announced that it has appointed Brian Grainger as its worldwide chief revenue officer and the newest member of its board of directors. Grainger has held storage industry sales leadership positions for more than two decades, most recently with Spectra Logic, where he served as chief sales officer.

“StorMagic SvSAN’s functionality, performance, uptime capability and price point make it the ideal solution for edge computing and small datacenter customers who want easy-to-use solutions,” said Grainger. “Customers will no longer tolerate the complexities inherent in traditional IT solutions—and SvSAN delivers a simple approach to IT at the edge.”

Nicholas Nystrom

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center also announced that Nicholas Nystrom has been named its chief scientist. In this newly created position, Nystrom will serve as the principal scientific advisor to the PSC’s director and be the primary authority for the technical content of the center’s science and technology portfolio. He will continue to serve as principal investigator on a number of critical research projects.

Nystrom most recently served as PSC’s interim director and senior research director. He joined PSC in 1992 as a scientific programmer and has held the position of research physicist at Carnegie Mellon University since 2004. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1992 from the University of Pittsburgh.

2018 Turing Award Winners

The Association for Computing Machinery has named Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun recipients of the 2018 ACM A.M. Turing Award for conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing. Bengio is Professor at the University of Montreal and Scientific Director at Mila, Quebec’s Artificial Intelligence Institute; Hinton is VP and Engineering Fellow of Google, Chief Scientific Adviser of the Vector Institute, and University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto; and LeCun is Professor at New York University and VP and Chief AI Scientist at Facebook.

“Artificial intelligence is now one of the fastest-growing areas in all of science and one of the most talked-about topics in society,” said ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. “The growth of and interest in AI is due, in no small part, to the recent advances in deep learning for which Bengio, Hinton and LeCun laid the foundation. These technologies are used by billions of people. Anyone who has a smartphone in their pocket can tangibly experience advances in natural language processing and computer vision that were not possible just 10 years ago. In addition to the products we use every day, new advances in deep learning have given scientists powerful new tools—in areas ranging from medicine, to astronomy, to materials science.”


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.