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 Association for Computing Machinery and IEEE Computer Society named David Abramson as the recipient of the 2021 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. Abramson, a professor at the University of Queensland, was recognized for contributions to parallel and distributed computing tools, with application from quantum chemistry to engineering design. He is also cited for his mentorship and service to the field.
Abramson has been general chair, program committee chair, or program committee member of conferences related to performance and programmer productivity, including IPDPS, HiPC, HPC Asia, HPDC, ICPADS, Cluster, SC, CCGrid, Grid and e-Science.
Kétévi Adiklè Assamagan and Swagato Mukherjee
The American Physical Society elected Kétévi Adiklè Assamagan and Swagato Mukherjee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory as 2021 APS fellows. Brookhaven Lab particle physics experimentalist Kétévi Adiklè Assamagan was recognized “for significant contributions to experimental studies of the Standard Model Higgs boson and the search for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model using the Higgs boson as a tool, and for leading physics outreach in Africa including founding the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications.”
Brookhaven Lab nuclear physics theorist Swagato Mukherjee was recognized “for seminal work employing ab initio lattice quantum chromodynamics to uncover fundamental information on the QCD phase diagram at finite temperatures and baryon density, and for the creative use of these methods to provide limits on the location of the critical point in heavy-ion collisions.”
SoftIron Ltd., a provider of purpose-built and performance-optimized data infrastructure solutions, appointed Kenneth Van Alstyne as its chief technology officer. Alstyne will be responsible for building SoftIron’s technology strategy and roadmap.
“A lot of companies talk about innovation, but SoftIron is redefining what that looks like on multiple fronts, at a time when the world needs new solutions,” said Alstyne. “A lot of companies are playing with software optimization for proprietary codebases, using commodity hardware platforms and calling that ‘innovation’. SoftIron is taking a more fundamental approach by starting quite literally at square one and asking, ‘what is really best for the customer?’…It’s a great honor to be a part of a team that challenges conventional thinking and I look forward to making a contribution to a new class of data infrastructure tools for an exciting age of computing.”
Atos appointed Rodolphe Belmer as its chief executive officer and board member. Belmer’s term of office will begin on January 20, 2022, at the latest. He will be responsible for leading a “transformation program” focused on secure and decarbonized digital services, pursuing growth both organically and through strategic acquisitions. Starting October 25, Pierre Barnabé and Adrian Gregory will serve as interim co-chief executive officers until Belmer takes office.
“The board of directors warmly thanks [outgoing CEO] Elie Girard for the deep transformation work he has undertaken over the past two years and his management of the Group and its employees during the Covid crisis,” said Bertrand Meunier, chairman of the board of directors of Atos SE, chairman of the nomination and governance committee. “In view of the challenges facing Atos, we have appointed Rodolphe Belmer for his strategic acumen and his proven leadership and operational efficiency, as well as his ability to successfully lead complex transformations.”
Belmer was previously the CEO of Eutelsat, a European satellite operator, a position he held since March 2016.
Graham Breeze, Brock Mowry, and Phil Trickovic
Tintri, a DDN subsidiary, appointed Graham Breeze as its vice president of products. Breeze has been a key contributor at various tech organizations across a career that spans more than 30 years, including nearly a decade with Tintri.
Brock Mowry also joined Tintri as its field chief technology officer. Mowry will be responsible for developing new Tintri solutions that meet the enterprise’s changing needs, including the implementation of a microservices approach.
Lastly, Phil Trickovic joined Tintri as its senior vice president of revenue. Trickovic brings 25 years of tech experience to the organization, including nearly a decade of prior Tintri expertise.
Anil Chakravarthy
Anil Chakravarthy
Ansys welcomed Anil Chakravarthy, executive vice president and general manager of digital experience and worldwide field operations at Adobe Inc, to its board of directors. Chakravarthy has held senior leadership positions at Informatica, Symantec, where he also served on the board of directors, LogicTier and McKinsey & Company, Inc., and held a board position at USAA Bank.
“As a leader in engineering simulation software, Ansys has already radically changed how products are brought to market better, faster and safer, and the company is just getting started,” said Chakravarthy. “I’m excited to join the board of a company that’s innovating across so many areas.”
Jason Clark, Aashish Clerk, and Paul Reimer
The American Physical Society awarded fellowships to three scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Jason Clark of the physics division was elected for high-precision mass measurements critical to the understanding of nucleosynthesis and for the development of improved techniques to enable such measurements.
Aashish Clerk of the materials Sciences division was elected for his fundamental contributions to the theory of quantum optomechanical systems, quantum dissipation engineering and other areas of quantum optics.
Paul Reimer of the physics division was elected for important experimental insight into the structure of the proton, most notably in using the Drell-Yan reaction to measure the flavor dependence of the sea of antiquarks in the proton.
Evangelos Eleftheriou
Semiconductor start-up Axelera AI appointed Evangelos Eleftheriou as its chief technology officer. Before joining Axelera AI, Eleftheriou, an IEEE and IBM Fellow, has held various leadership positions at IBM Research, including head of cloud and computing infrastructure and as leader of the neuromorphic and in-memory computing activities at IBM Research-Zurich.
“I am honoured to be joining the executive team at Axelera AI,” said Eleftheriou. “Axelera AI will be changing the AI industry with its new technological designs. I look forward to working closely with their leadership, board and advisors to achieve the company’s goals and introduce new AI solutions around the globe.”
Maheen Hamid
The Electronic System Design Alliance, a SEMI Technology Community, appointed Maheen Hamid, chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Breker Verification Systems, to its governing council. Hamid brings more than 15 years of financial experience in deal structuring and operations management in diverse industries including wireless telecommunications, clean energy, health, and infrastructure projects in emerging markets.
“I am delighted to be joining the governing council of this important organization at a key moment in its history,” said Hamid. “As Breker has grown to become an established EDA company working with semiconductor companies in the area of test suite synthesis, we have gained a wealth of experience and I hope to bring this perspective to the council.”
Patrick Henderson
Astera Labs, a provider of purpose-built connectivity solutions for intelligent systems, appointed Patrick Henderson as its vice president of sales. Henderson will lead the direct and channel sales operations for the company globally. Before Astera Labs, Henderson served as vice president and co-general manager of Broadcom’s mixed-signal ASIC products division.
“Data and the speed with which it is processed is central to unleashing the full potential of applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning for arriving at actionable insights,” said Henderson. “I am honored to lead Astera Labs’ efforts in broadening its market reach and accelerating the growing demand for its connectivity solutions that enable faster processing of data through the removal of performance bottlenecks within the data center.”
Infinidat, the provider of enterprise-class storage solutions, appointed Eric Herzog as its chief marketing officer. Herzog has more than 30 years of experience in the enterprise storage industry, managing all aspects of marketing, product management, and business development in both start-ups and Fortune 500 companies.
“Infinidat is the most innovative enterprise storage company at scale in the world today, delivering an AI-driven set-it-and-forget-it approach with unprecedented 100% availability, superior performance that is faster than all-flash alternatives, an extensive storage software defined portfolio, and lower total cost of ownership,” said Herzog. “I’m excited about the opportunity to reach every enterprise and service provider that will benefit from the power and flexibility of Infinidat solutions. With best-in-class solutions, exceptional support, motivated channel partners, and an exciting vision for the future, we will expand the Infinidat brand to a leadership position in enterprise storage.”
Axel Hoffmann, Liang Jiang, and Giulia Galli
Axel Hoffmann of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received the 2022 David Adler Lectureship Award in the Field of Material Physics for his work advancing the understanding of spin transport and magnetization dynamics in magnetic multilayers. He is also being recognized for his inspiring lectures and engaging discussions.
Liang Jiang of the University of Chicago received the 2022 Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett Award in quantum computing for his contributions to the field of theoretical quantum information science. His research focuses on exploiting novel error correction strategies to enhance performance in a manner compatible with state-of-the-art experimental platforms, and for helping establish new foundations for fault-tolerant and practical quantum communication, computing, and sensing.
Lastly, Giulia Galli received the 2022 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics for her work to develop theoretical methods to compute and engineer the electronic and structural properties of molecules and materials. Her work broadens the applicability of first-principles computational approaches to multiple disciplines. Galli is a Liew Family professor of electronic structure and simulations in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. Giulia is also a senior scientist at Argonne National Lab.
National Center for Supercomputing Applications Chief Scientist Daniel S. Katz was elected to the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2022. The BOG drives the Computer Society’s vision forward, provides policy guidance to program boards and committees, and reviews the performance of the organization to ensure compliance with its policy directions.
“I’m pleased to have been elected,” Katz said. “My main goal as a Board of Governors member will be to develop ties between the Computer Society and international efforts around promoting the role of research software in research and recognizing the efforts of those who develop and maintain it, whether in academia, laboratories, or industry. This is my passion and an area in which the Computer Society should be leading. Many research software community members are now or could become Computer Society members, and this work is increasingly essential to the Computer Society’s role in research. I believe this can 1) grow the Computer Society’s membership and increase its diversity by supporting research software developers and maintainers who today may not feel that the Computer Society is for them, and 2) produce better computing solutions and positive impacts on society by making better and more sustainable research software.”
Gaurav Khanna, a University of Rhode Island professor of physics, was elected fellow of the American Physical Society. Khanna is also the University’s founding director of research computing. Khanna was named a fellow for his outstanding contributions and work in computational relativity, including supercomputing techniques, computations of gravitational perturbations of black holes, gravitational waveforms from extreme mass-ratio binaries, classical black hole physics, and quantum gravity.
“I’m truly honored by this recognition of my research contributions by the American Physical Society,” said Khanna. “I’d like to thank my students and collaborators without whom I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this, and support from the National Science Foundation over the decades.”
Kevin Lepak
AMD appointed senior fellow and server system on chip architect Kevin Lepak to AMD Corporate Fellow, in recognition of his critical role in the design of next-generation AMD EPYC processors. As an AMD corporate fellow, Lepak expands on his leadership in chip design to play a larger role in evolving AMD’s processor and systems vision.
Lepak has been with AMD for 16 years. He currently is a leading technologist with deep subject matter expertise in SoC design, memory and I/O performance, and CPU architectures. His technical aptitude and critical role in architecting an industry-leading roadmap have contributed to significant data center growth.
Melodie McGeoch, Clare McLaughlin, and Rosemarie Sadsad
The National Computational Infrastructure, Australia’s leading high-performance data, storage and computing organization, appointed Melodie McGeoch, Clare McLaughlin, and Dr. Rosemarie Sadsad as independent board members to the NCI advisory board.
La Trobe University Professor Melodie McGeoch is a natural scientist with expertise in the environmental consequences of global change. She serves on the Implementation Committee of the Group on Earth Observations – Biodiversity Observation Network, and the Science Committee of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
Clare McLaughlin, general manager of the National Health and Medical Research Council, is responsible for managing NHMRC staff and operations, including providing high-level advice and input on NHMRC policy and strategy.
Rosemarie Sadsad is the research informatics manager at the Sydney Informatics Hub Core Facility, University of Sydney and is responsible for data science, software engineering, simulation, and bioinformatics capabilities.
The IEEE Computer Society announced Nita Patel was tapped as the IEEE CS 2022 president-elect (2023 president). Patel is senior director of engineering at Otis; an IEEE Foundation director; and a mentor for several IEEE Women in Engineering summits.
Patel will serve as the 2023 IEEE CS president for a one-year term beginning January 1, 2023. The president oversees IEEE CS programs and operations and is a nonvoting member of most IEEE CS program boards and committees.
2021 Argonne Distinguished Fellows
U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory announced the 2021 Argonne Distinguished Fellows are Pete Beckman, Lois Curfman McInnes and Rick Stevens from the Computing, Environment and Life Sciences directorate; Jeffrey Elam from the Energy and Global Security directorate; and Stephen Gray from the Physical Sciences and Engineering directorate. For more on each fellow, click here.
The Nobel Assembly and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2021 Nobel Prize recipients. Among the prize recipients in physiology or medicine, physics, and economic sciences are researchers who have been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Click here for more on this year’s winners and a summary of their achievements as well as a description of the research NSF helped to support.
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.
