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!
SEMI, the global industry association that unites the entire electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, appointed John Cooney as its vice president of global advocacy and public policy. Cooney brings more than 20 years of public policy experience to the role. He will oversee global government relations at SEMI, including directing strategies to manage and strengthen the association’s global public policy agenda and advocacy efforts.
“I am honored to join SEMI at this exciting time for the semiconductor industry as countries worldwide intensify their focus on the semiconductor industry’s vital importance to the broader electronics supply chain and global economy,” Cooney said. “I look forward to working with representatives at SEMI member companies to build on the association’s work to shape government policies on trade, tax, talent, technology and other key issues to help ensure the industry’s continuing growth.”
atNorth, the pan-Nordic colocation, high performance computing and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Stephen Donovan as its chief development officer. As CDO, Donovan will focus on site selection, design and delivery of new datacenter sites across the Nordics and the rest of Europe, as well as the expansion of the existing atNorth facilities in Iceland and Sweden.
“I am very excited to join the atNorth Executive Team at this pivotal time for the company’s future,” said Donovan. “atNorth is a disruptive energy in the data center space and is poised and ready for substantial growth in its operations in a strategic, sustainable, and commercially responsible way across Europe. I’m thrilled to be a part of this journey with a company that is already ahead of the curve.”
John Harechmak
Hammerspace appointed John Harechmak as its worldwide vice president of systems engineering and customer success. Harechmak will be responsible for leading the solution architect team, overseeing the post-sales implementation and customer education, and ensuring ongoing customer success. He comes to Hammerspace from Cohesity and prior to that, he served in various roles at a number of data storage companies, including NetApp, Nutanix and Nimble Storage.
“For years, organizations have been seeking a way to share data across sites in the data center and the cloud, under one management interface, as one big namespace, and with optimized orchestration – but to no avail. Hammerspace has solved this difficult challenge and is shifting the data paradigm with its very powerful Global Data Environment,“ said Harechmak.
Lightmatter, a leader in photonic computing, appointed Richard Ho as its vice president of hardware engineering. Ho joined LIghtmatter from Google, where he spent nearly 9 years at the company leading the Cloud Tensor Processing Units project.
“Advances in AI and machine learning will slow down unless we develop new solutions that can be deployed at scale. The products Lightmatter is developing are ground breaking,” said Ho. “I’m excited to be a part of the company that’s completely changing the way the industry is approaching power constraints, and am incredibly impressed with the results the team has already produced.”
Rebecca House
Marvell, a provider of data infrastructure semiconductor solutions, appointed Rebecca (Becky) House to its board of directors. House currently serves as the senior vice president, chief people and legal officer and secretary of Rockwell Automation, Inc.
“Becky has an extensive background in talent management, ethics and compliance, public affairs, security and sustainability, and is a proven leader in building and maintaining exceptional company cultures within large, multinational companies,” said Murphy. “Her insights and counsel will be very valuable as we continue to scale and grow Marvell’s business globally.”
Travis Humble of the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory was appointed as director of the Quantum Science Center. Preceding this appointment, Humble was named deputy director in August 2020, when DOE established this five-year, $115 million effort as one of five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers.
“I am excited to be working at the forefront of quantum science and technology with this amazing team of scientists and engineers,” he said. “The QSC provides a wonderful opportunity to leverage our nation’s best and brightest for solving some of the most interesting scientific problems of our time.”
Lightmatter, a leader in photonic computing, appointed Ritesh Jain as its vice president of engineering. He joined Lightmatter after more than 21 years at Intel leading systems and packaging engineering for data center programs.
“By 2030, 20% of energy consumption across the planet will be from data centers. That’s a staggering number. Lightmatter is tackling this problem with tech many believed to be impossible until just a few years ago,” said Jain. “This is one of the most important environmental issues to solve when you factor in the immense strain AI will put on the grid. Silicon photonics solves this issue in a big way, and it’s a challenge I’m excited to take on with some of the brightest minds in the industry.”
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications’ Volodymyr (Vlad) Kindratenko was named the recipient of the George Anner Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Kindratenko was recognized by the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the Grainger College of Engineering.
“I am very honored to receive the George Anner Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award,” said Kindratenko. “Teaching courses in our ECE department, which is consistently ranked among the top engineering programs in the world, and interacting with the best and brightest students in the program is one of my most cherished activities. I am very grateful to the students and faculty who nominated me for this award, and I am looking forward to continuing to empower students with the knowledge and experience necessary to become the best engineers and researchers.”
NEC Corporation of America, a provider and integrator of advanced IT, communications, networking and biometric solution, appointed Gary Lac as its vice president of solutions. Lac brings more than 20 years of biometric and identity solution sales, development and delivery experience to NEC.
“NEC is transforming the biometric and digital identity industry with world-class technology that is proven and trusted,” said Lac. “As our partners in law enforcement and governments transform to digital-first organizations, I’m excited to develop innovative solutions that will improve society and support our customers in their mission to create safe and secure communities.”
Zapata Computing appointed Jay Liu as its vice president of product. At Zapata, Liu will be responsible primarily for leading strategic direction and management for the company’s product portfolio, including its Orquestra platform.
“Demand at the intersection of quantum computing, ML, and next-gen compute is accelerating, and it’s clear that there’s a massive opportunity ahead for Zapata Computing and its Orquestra platform,” said Liu. “Orquestra helps enterprises create and capture value from Big Compute – the powerful, heterogeneous, and distributed compute resources, both quantum and classical, needed for the most computationally complex problems. I’m looking forward to helping Zapata deliver innovative products to customers that tackle these problems head on and expand the Enterprise Quantum market category that we are creating and leading.”
Bijan Nowroozi
The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), the nonprofit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, appointed Bijan Nowroozi as its chief technology officer. Nowroozi brings more than 27 years of experience to the Foundation. Most recently, Nowroozi served as the system architect for EF Johnson Technologies/JVCKENWOOD.
“I am so excited to join the journey with OCP as CTO. Joining George Tchaparian and the OCP Foundation Team for this adventure is an honor,” said Nowroozi. “This is an amazing opportunity to optimize the roadmaps and solve new problems facing the industry with our outstanding OCP Community. It’s also an incredible time to consider our role in larger challenges facing us, including efficiency and sustainability. I look forward to working with the OCP Community, the Foundation Team and our OCP board of directors, to reach our best and full potential.”
Eoin O’Connor
GridGain Systems, a provider of enterprise-grade in-memory computing solutions powered by the Apache Ignite distributed database, promoted Eoin O’Connor to the role of president and chief executive officer. O’Connor has been with GridGain since 2016, serving as chief financial officer and more recently as chief operating officer.
“I am excited to lead GridGain as we continue to grow and build on the momentum we have created over the last few years,” said O’Connor. “At a time of rapid digital transformation across many businesses, I expect to see more and more enterprises turning to GridGain to addresstheir data challenges.”
Lynne Parker was appointed as the associate vice chancellor and director of the new AI Tennessee Initiative at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she will lead the university’s strategic vision and strategy for multidisciplinary artificial intelligence education and research. Parker returns to the UT after completing a four-year post as deputy United States chief technology officer and director of the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office within the White House.
“My goal has always been to advance AI initiatives and policy to the benefit of the American people, and indeed our world. I am proud of the accomplishments we have made over three administrations, together with colleagues from across government, academia, and industry,” said Parker. “In my new role, I look forward to advancing Tennessee’s engagement in this work by bringing together the broad perspectives and expertise of faculty and students from across many disciplines, not only on the UT Knoxville campus but also with partner institutions and organizations across the state.”
Pradheepa Raman
GlobalFoundries, a semiconductor manufacturing company, appointed Pradheepa Raman as its chief people officer. Raman joined the company from Stanley Black & Decker, where she held the dual roles of global head of human resources and chief transformation officer for the company’s largest business unit.
“I am incredibly excited to begin my journey at GF at a time when the semiconductor industry is so vital to the global economy,” said Raman. “I am really looking forward to working with GF’s global team of talented engineers, technicians and business leaders. GF’s diverse talent pool is a real strength and their relentless commitment to developing their employees was critical in my decision to join the leadership team. Employees are a company’s most important resource, and I have spent my career creating HR systems to engage, develop, and empower talent. I can’t wait to get started at GF.”
Peter Rose was presented with a team award from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. Rose, who is the director of the Structural Bioinformatics Laboratory at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, was recognized for his work in the COVID-19 Common Data Elements Working Groups.
“I was surprised to get this award as we were just doing our jobs,” Rose said. “It has been exciting to learn about the new technologies being developed for COVID-19 diagnosis and to contribute to this effort.”
Q-CTRL, a developer of quantum technologies through quantum control infrastructure software, appointed Alex Shih as its head of product. Shih will lead the company’s product management teams to deliver the technology’s value and ROI to customers and end users in new, broader markets.
“Moving from large, traditional Silicon Valley corporations to a fast scaling quantum software company brings new challenges and exciting opportunities that I look forward to embracing in this new role,” said Shih. “I am inspired by quantum technology’s potential to revolutionize computing and accelerate resource-intensive applications and use cases across industries. My aim is to leverage my experiences building and scaling products from various domains to deliver real value to our customers, from speed of delivery to performance gains to cost savings, which is simply infeasible with alternative technologies.”
Amy Schuele, associate director of integrated cyberinfrastructure, will retire following her impactful tenure of 31 years at the National Center for Supercomputing Application. Schuele mentions her work developing the XSEDE Resource Allocation Service at XSEDE as a major milestone in her career.
“Be open, be willing to do whatever is needed to advance the project or the work that you’re doing,” said Schuele. “I don’t think we have the opportunity to put up our hands and say, ‘not my job.’ That’s not going to be successful. We all need to work together.”
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Corporate Fellow and Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences researcher Bobby Sumpter was named fellow of two scientific professional societies: the Institute of Physics and the International Association of Advanced Materials. Sumpter was named ORNL Corporate Fellow in 2013 and chaired the Corporate Fellows Council from 2018-2022. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“I am delighted to be named a fellow of these professional organizations,” Sumpter said. “It presents a great opportunity to promote physics and materials science internationally.”
Robert Sinkovits, who serves as the director of Education and Training at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego, has been selected as the chairperson for the 2023 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing (PEARC23).
“We’re thrilled that PEARC23 will be held in Portland, the original location for PEARC20 before it had to go virtual because of the pandemic,” Sinkovits said. “Our theme will be ‘Computing for the Common Good’, which we’re hoping will inspire everyone in our community to think about how they can apply their skills to solving timely and important problems in everything from addressing climate change to advancing the computational social sciences.”
Intel Corp. elected Lip‑Bu Tan to its board of directors. Tan currently is the executive chairman of Cadence Design Systems Inc., chairman of Walden International, and founding managing partner of Celesta Capital and Walden Catalyst Ventures. Tan will also join the M&A Committee of Intel’s board of directors.
“Intel is an iconic company with a rich history, and I am honored to join its board of directors,” Tan said. “Under Pat Gelsinger’s bold leadership, Intel is undergoing a massive transformation to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead, and I look forward to being a part of this exciting journey.”
The National GEM Consortium, one of the organizations for the best and brightest underrepresented minority STEM talent in the country, appointed Oak Ridge National Laboratory Chief of Staff Lindsey Twardy as a member of its board of directors. Currently, Twardy serves as an advisor to ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia.
“I am honored to join the National GEM Consortium’s Board of Directors and be part of building a diverse pipeline of STEM talent to advance scientific impact,” Twardy said.
Elif Tutuk
AtScale, the provider of semantic layer solutions for modern business intelligence and data science teams, appointed Elif Tutuk as its vice president of product.Tutuk will lead AtScale’s global product team, spanning the Bay Area to Boston to Bulgaria, with responsibility for product management, product strategy, design and innovation.
“I’ve worked in business intelligence and analytics for the past 18 years and I’m thrilled to join AtScale, the category-defining leader for semantic layer technology,” said Tutuk. “The advent of powerful cloud data platforms, powerful data visualization tools, and pervasive AI/ML bring the potential to truly democratize insight creation. I see the semantic layer as the missing link that can truly connect organizations to their data assets.”
Tachyum appointed Fabio Vernillo to its newly created board of observers. Vernillo currently serves as the head of investments for Avanea, a next-generation asset manager founded by IPM Group. He is responsible for driving the investment activities within Avanea, originating, executing transactions and managing the investment team.
“I am extremely excited to join the Tachyum family and support the management team in taking Tachyum to the next level,” said Vernillo. “Tachyum’s Prodigy Universal Processor is a game-changing product that will be crucial for the world to cope with an increasing data processing need while addressing decarbonization through more efficient use of resources.”
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.
