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!
The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has selected Shawn Brown as its next director. Brown joins PSC from McGill University, where he served as the chief technology officer of the Neurohub Project and associate director of research software development at the McGill Centre for Integrative Neuroscience.
“I am extremely excited to be coming home to PSC as its director. Having spent most of my career building high performance computing software and platforms to accelerate scientific discovery across multiple disciplines, I understand the impact that combining world-class computational facilities with a world-renowned staff at two internationally recognized universities can have. I look forward to joining the storied team at PSC and to leading the center into the future of data-driven and highly collaborative science,” said Brown.
KC Claffy, director of the Center for Applied Data Analysis (CAIDA) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and an adjunct professor in UC San Diego’s Computer Science and Engineering Department, has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame for her pioneering work in the area of internet measurement and analysis.
Claffy published the first of many papers on internet traffic measurement and analysis in 1992, and in 1997 founded CAIDA. The center initially focused on data that informed the technical community, but now also examines the economic and policy context that defines the internet ecosystem, including analysis related to infrastructure security and stability, the mutual interdependence of architecture and policy, and the ethics of information technology research.
IEEE Computer Society has selected Alan Edelman as the winner of the Sidney Fernbach Award. Edelman is co-creator of Julia, co-founder and chief scientist at Julia Computing, professor of applied mathematics at MIT and head of the Julia Lab at MIT.
According to the Society, Edelman received the award “for outstanding breakthroughs in high-performance computing, linear algebra and computational science, and for contributions to the Julia programming language.” The award consists of a certificate and a $2,000 honorarium, and it will be presented to Edelman at the SC19 conference in November.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES has announced the appointment of Amir Faintuch as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s computing and wired infrastructure and strategic business unit. Faintuch has held senior management and executive leadership roles at Intel, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.
“This is a new era of ‘The Renaissance of Compute’, where the rise of silicon architecture is complemented by silicon processes and will drive new compute engines and emerging workloads,” said Faintuch. “I am excited to join GF to help drive this market transformation by leveraging GF’s specialized applications solutions that will enable its clients to differentiate and win in the market.”
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (SC) has named Ian Foster a 2019 SC Distinguished Scientist Fellow. Foster, the director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Data Science and Learning Division and a professor of computer science at the University of Chicago, received the award for “pioneering work in distributed and high-performance computing with fundamental and long-lasting impacts on both computer science as a discipline and the practice of computing across the Office of Science.”
“This recognition of Argonne’s exceptional computer science program and culture, and the work of my many collaborators over many years, is extremely gratifying,” Foster said. “I am excited to be able to use this support to pursue new research directions at the intersection of artificial intelligence and science.”
The Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE Computer Society have named Geoffrey C. Fox of Indiana University Bloomington as the recipient of the 2019 ACM-EEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. Fox was cited for foundational contributions to parallel computing methodology, algorithms and software, and data analysis, and their interfaces with broad classes of applications.
Fox is director of the Digital Science Center and associate dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, and a professor of informatics and computing and physics at Indiana University Bloomington. He is principal investigator of FutureGrid, a new cyberinfrastructure test to enable new scientific computing approaches. He has more than 1,200 publications in physics and computer science.
James Hetherington
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has appointed James Hetherington as its new director of e-infrastructure. Hetherington, who has a PhD in computational particle physics from Cambridge, has held roles at University College London, the Alan Turing Institute, the UK Association of Research Software Engineers and more.
Mark Thomson, executive chair of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, said “James comes to UKRI with a wealth of experience and a strong history of working across research council boundaries. We are delighted that he has decided to join us at this exciting time; his experience and deep knowledge will help us drive UKRI’s e-Infrastructure roadmap forward.”
Codeplay has announced that Jim Nicholas is its new chairman. Nicholas is currently CEO of Uniphy, and in the past has been CEO of MIPS, executive vice president at Imagination Technologies and senior leadership roles at ARM, ST-Ericsson and Frontier Smart Technologies.
“I have known and admired Codeplay’s contributions to the industries that we’ve served for a long while,” Nicholas said. “I am honored to be given the opportunity to support Codeplay in achieving its ambitions. Codeplay has the technologies, great people and vision to ensure that its value and impact will become more profound and widespread.”
Rambus Inc. has announced the appointment of Dr. Necip Sayiner to its board of directors. Prior to joining the Rambus board, Sayiner was executive vice president and general manager at Renesas Electronics Corporation, following their acquisition of Intersil, where he served as president and CEO.
“Rambus is in the midst of executing a transformation of its business to a product-focused enterprise,” said Sayiner. “I look forward to working with the board and executive team to support the growing portfolio of high-performance leading-edge semiconductor solutions.”
Cerebras Systems has announced that Vinay Srinivas, former vice president of engineering at Synopsys, has joined Cerebras Systems as vice president of software engineering. Srinivas, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, has led software engineering at startups and Fortune 500 companies.
“Cerebras is an industry pioneer, and I look forward to helping the company achieve its quest to dominate in AI acceleration,” said Srinivas. “The Wafer Scale Engine is the result of fearless engineering, exceptional focus and tireless dedication to solving the problem of AI compute. I’m excited to join the Cerebras team and help define the future of AI—and to ensure that all of Cerebras’s solutions are simple to install, easy to use, and exceptionally flexible, all while delivering record breaking performance.”
Atos has announced that Uwe Stelter has been appointed as its new chief financial officer. Stelter has been deputy CFO of the group since July, after holding COO roles in the Infrastructure and Data Management and Business and Platform divisions. Prior to that, he was CFO of the Infrastructure and Data Management division and of the North America Business Unit.
Stelter joined Atos in 2011 from Siemens, where he held multiple global finance management positions in the U.S. and Germany in the IT and Communication divisions. Stelter was also CFO of ProSTEP, a Germany-based consulting and software company serving the product lifecycle management market. He is a graduate of AKAD University in Germany.
2019 Distinguished ACM Members
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named 62 Distinguished Members for outstanding contributions to the field. All 2019 inductees are longstanding ACM members and were selected by their peers for a range of accomplishments that have contributed to important technologies. “Each year it is our honor to select a new class of Distinguished Members,” explains ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. “Our overarching goal is to build a community wherein computing professionals can grow professionally and, in turn, contribute to the field and the broader society.” To see the full list of 2019 inductees, 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.
