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!
Pascal Bouvry and Roger Lampach
Pascal Bouvry and Roger Lampach were appointed as chief executive officers of LuxProvide to establish and develop the MeluXina supercomputer that will be installed at the LuxConnect’s DC2 datacenter. In August 2019, Lampach started at the company as managing director before he was promoted to CEO.
Lampach will lead the industrial and project management projects, and Bouvry will manage the scientific aspects of executing the supercomputer. Bouvry will stay as a professor at the University of Luxembourg. The goal of the MeluXina supercomputer is to develop and support a secure digital economy in Luxembourg.
Jacqueline Chen, James De Yoreo, and Cynthia Keppel
Jacqueline Chen, James De Yoreo, and Cynthia Keppel were named as Department of Energy Office of Science Distinguished Scientists Fellows. They were awarded $1 million over three years to fund the Fellow’s own research project. The award prize is authorized by the America COMPETES Act for National Laboratory scientists.
Chen from Sandia National Laboratories was selected for her work on accelerating the fields of combustion and high-performance computing. De Yoreo from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was chosen for his discoveries on materials synthesis from complex nucleation pathways to hierarchical assembly. Keppel from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility was selected for her contributions to the exploration of the quark structure of hadrons and nuclei through electron scattering.
The SEMI Foundation appointed Katy Crist to the board of trustees. She currently serves as director of marketing and communications at Tokyo Electron Limited and co-chairs the SEMI Workforce Development/Diversity & Inclusion Council.
“It has been an extraordinary privilege to partner with the SEMI Foundation Board,” Crist said. “Over the past several years, I’ve had an intimate look at the SEMI Foundation’s work to tackle the most substantial challenges facing our industry – talent crisis, industry image, and D&I. As a member of the Board of Trustees, I look forward to working more closely with the Foundation to strengthen our industry across these and other critical issues.”
NVIDIA appointed John Dabiri, a centennial professor of aeronautics and mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, to its board of directors. Before Caltech, Dabiri spent four years at Stanford University as a professor of civil and environmental engineering and of mechanical engineering.
Dabiri leads the Dabiri Lab, which conducts research at the intersections of fluid mechanics, energy and environment, and biology. Dabiri was awarded MacArthur Fellowship in 2010 for his contributions to theoretical engineering. He has also received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Dr. Patrick Flick received the 2020 Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing Doctoral Dissertation Award for his contributions to the design and analysis of parallel string algorithms on distributed memory parallel computers, with applications to computational biology. Flick’s paper, “Parallel and Scalable Combinatorial String Algorithms on Distributed Memory Systems,” presented a distributed-memory parallel algorithm for building a distributed depiction of suffix trees.
The SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award is given annually for the best doctoral dissertation completed in high performance computing. The award comes with $2,000 cash prize, a plaque, and recognition at the International Supercomputing Conference.
Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, William H. Goldstein, announced he is retiring. In March 2014, Goldstein was tapped as the 12th director of the Lab and the third president of LLNS. Goldstein served 36 years at the Lab and will step down after a replacement is found.
“It is an immense honor to serve as director of this unique, exceptional institution,” Goldstein said. “I have been privileged throughout my career to work alongside great scientists, engineers, technicians, and administrators who have devoted their estimable talents to our critical missions. The Lab has demonstrated, again and again, its ability to contribute to solving the biggest problems, and I am confident it will continue to serve the nation with new ideas.”
Jayant Haritsa, Hemangee Kapoor, and Venkatesh Raman
Jayant Haritsa, Hemangee Kapoor, and Venkatesh Raman were elected as the president, vice president, and secretary/treasurer of the India Council of the Association for Computing Machinery, respectively. The ACM India Council will serve from July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2022. Since 1993, Haritsa (President) serves on the faculty of the Department of Computational and Data Sciences and the Department of Computer Science and Automation at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Kapoor (Vice President) serves on the faculty of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Guwahati. She is a Senior Member of ACM and IEEE. Lastly, Raman (Secretary/Treasurer) is a professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai. Since 2016, Raman has been on ACM India Council. He also held the role of VP from July 2018 through June 2020.
Rambus Inc. appointed Greg Lang to its board of directors. Lang has over a 30-year career with leadership experience within the semiconductor industry. He currently serves as president and chief executive officer at PMC-Sierra. Lang has also served on the board of the Semiconductor Industry Association.
“Rambus products are at the heart of some very exciting megatrends that advance the global data infrastructure,” Lang said. “I am excited to work with the board and executive team as they continue to develop and expand their portfolio and market position in critical technology areas.”
Director of the Institute for Advanced Simulation and Head of Jülich Supercomputing Centre Thomas Lippert was appointed professor at Goethe University Frankfurt and will also serve as chair, a newly created position for the Modular Supercomputing and Quantum Computing at the Institute for Computer Science.
Under the role, he will be providing support to the Center for Scientific Computing at the Goethe University to continue the development of a national high-performance computing center.
Dr. J Michel Metz was selected to serve as interim chair of the Storage Networking Industry Association Board of Directors. Metz takes over the role from David Dale, who is retiring. This appointment is effective in October 2020. Metz has served as a member of the board since 2013.
“The SNIA organization is stronger than ever,” said Metz, “and this is due in no small part to David Dale’s excellent leadership. I feel honored and privileged to accept the responsibility of carrying the banner forward. This is a very exciting time for SNIA as we explore new technology standards for the emerging storage and memory technologies to help transform the industry.”
Dor Minzer received the 2019 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for his key contributions in his dissertation, entitled “On Monotonicity Testing and the 2-to-2-Games Conjecture,” which are relaxing the complexity of testing monotonicity of Boolean functions and accelerating to a resolution of the Unique Games Conjecture.
Minzer currently has a role as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study, but in the fall of 2020, he is joining MIT as an Assistant Professor. His primary research focus are in computational complexity theory, PCP, and analysis of Boolean functions.
Kalyan Perumalla was appointed chair of the Association of Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Simulation, which aims to accelerate innovation in subfields of computing, such as networking and continued education. Perumalla has been contributing to SIGSIM for more than 20 years. In 1999, he won the Best Paper Award.
“I want to usher in the next ten years,” said Perumalla. “The simulation field is going through significant changes with the introduction of AI and high-performance computing technologies, and new domains, including those in the social sciences and cyber-physical systems, coming into the fold. I want to bring the leaders of these communities together to push the state of the art.”
David Reeder joins GLOBALFOUNDRIES under the role of chief financial officer. Reeder brings over 20 years of financial and leadership experience in private and public organizations, including Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Cisco, and Electronics for Imaging.
“I can’t imagine a more exciting time to join GF,” said David Reeder. “I look forward to joining a world-class team, leading the finance organization, and contributing to the company’s future success as it progresses to the next phase of its growth.”
Excelero announced the addition of Henri Richard as a board advisor. Richard brings over 40 years of leadership experience in sales and marketing positions. He is co-founder of Carvault RRS and is the executive vice president of worldwide field and customer operations for NetApp.
“Excelero is addressing one of the most pivotal demands in enterprise technology today – building end-to-end, high-performance storage solutions for AI training and analytics workloads at any scale with maximum ROI,” said Richard. “New workloads require new storage, and Excelero’s groundbreaking approaches to Elastic NVMe have widespread appeal. I look forward to helping Excelero find new opportunities for growth.”
Northern Data AG selected Stefan Sickenberger to serve as its chief operating officer to the Management Board, where he will be responsible for business-relevant functions, including operational processes and quality control. Sickenberger has over 20 years of experience in leadership positions, including the establishment of iNNOVO Cloud alongside Co-Founders Dr. Sebastian Ritz and Dr. Hermann-Josef Lambert.
“I am looking forward to my new assignment at Northern Data AG and the opportunity to further advance the Company’s HPC activities,” Sickenberger said. “Aroosh Thillainathan and his team have laid the foundation for one of the most exciting success stories in the German IT industry by managing to build the world’s largest data center for HPC applications in Texas and winning major corporations as long-term customers. Northern Data has already established a reputation as an infrastructure provider for the rapidly growing blockchain industry. Now it’s time to extend this lead further and expand into other industries.”
Alex Starr was promoted to the role of AMD Corporate Fellow. AMD recognized Starr for his contributions to advanced emulation methodologies within AMD products. He has been with AMD for 15 years and is considered a leader in verification methodologies for SoCs, CPUs, and GPUs.
AMD Corporate Fellows are selected based on their contributions to the company and to the industry as a whole, including mentorships. Seven engineers hold the title at AMD.
Jeffrey Vetter
Jeffrey Vetter was named a Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Corporate Fellow. He was selected for his contributions to accelerate the architectures and software for high-performance computing, which are considered a key to deploying high-performance computing systems for science. Vetter manages the Future Technologies division in ORNL’s Computer Science and Mathematics Division.
Vetter is also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a Distinguished Scientist Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2010, his team was awarded the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for HPC applications.
2020 SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellows
ACM’s Special Interest Group on High Performance Computing announced the 2020 recipients of the ACM SIGHPC Computational and Data Science Fellowships. This program aims to build diversity in data science and computational fields. The twelve Fellows selected will receive $15, 000 per year to study anywhere they choose. For the list of recipients, click here.
“A key to ensuring a robust workforce for our field is to focus on diversifying the expertise, backgrounds, and perspectives of students studying the computational sciences,” says John West, SIGHPC chair and chair of the fellowship program for 2020. “We are grateful to Intel for their financial support in launching these fellowships, and we are proud to continue pursuing the goal of broadening participation in our profession with the financial support of SIGHPC members.”
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.
