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!
Moshe Bar, chief executive officer and chairman of CodeNotary, was appointed to the board of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation, an open source, community-governed and forever-free enterprise Linux distribution. Before CodeNotary, Bar was a co-founder of Qumranet, which was acquired by Red Hat. He went on to serve as senior vice president for four years at Red Hat.
“The world needs a Linux distribution that is truly owned and supported by the community and prioritizes security, provenance guarantee and trust,“ said Bar. “AlmaLinux has taken on that role amid enthusiastic community adoption.”
LIQID Inc., a leading datacenter composability solutions provider, appointed John Bertero as its chief revenue officer. Bertero joined the company from Nutanix, where he ultimately served as chief operating officer of the Americas. He also served in leadership positions at SAP, Sr. Vice President at Hitachi Security Systems, and EMC.
“Liqid Matrix CDI software and solutions have the potential to change the way the industry architects its data centers. By introducing unprecedented software-defined data performance and operational efficiencies that meaningfully reduce capital- and operational expenditures, Liqid Matrix offers the opportunity to manage bare-metal resources such as GPU with the agility that VMware brought to traditional server architectures,” Bertero said. “I look forward to collaborating across Liqid’s sales, engineering, marketing, operations, and leadership teams to identify new markets, develop new revenue streams, and expand customer and partner successes with Liqid Matrix software and solutions.”
Arm appointed Jason Child as its chief financial officer. Child brings more than 30 years of experience in leadership to Arm, most recently having served as senior vice president and CFO at Splunk. At Arm, he will be responsible for leading the company’s global finance and IT organizations.
“Since its founding, Arm has had an incredible history of innovation and leadership in the semiconductor industry,” said Child. “Arm is a world-class, category leader and I am thrilled to join as CFO during this exciting time for the company.”
Quantinuum, a quantum computing company, appointed Nathan Cobb as its chief commercial officer. Cobb has led sales teams at SAP, Apple, Oracle, and EY where he developed growth strategies led change management efforts, and built strategic partnerships.
“I am honored to join Quantinuum at this crucial moment in the industry,” said Cobb. “The company has built the highest-performing, most fully integrated quantum solution on the market and is putting all the right elements in place to scale it.”
Angelo Di Bernardo and Alexander Grimm
Oxford Instruments, a provider of high technology products, systems and tools for research and industry, announced the winners of the 2022 Nicolas Kurti Science Prize. Angelo Di Bernardo, associate professor in the department of physics at the University of Konstan, was recognized for his achievements in the spectroscopy of spin-polarized (spin-triplet) states in superconductor/ferromagnet hybrids.
Di Bernardo was also recognized for the discovery of new coupling effects and quantum phases existing at the surfaces and interfaces of strongly-correlated electron materials and materials with low dimensionality. In addition, Alexander Grimm, a researcher in the photon science division at the Paul Scherrer Institut was recognized for his work on non-linear effects in Josephson junctions for quantum information processing.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise appointed Regina Dugan to its board of directors. Dugan currently serves as president and chief executive officer of Wellcome Leap and was a former director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. At HPE, She will also serve as a member of the board’s technology committee.
“Edge-to-cloud architectures are essential to competitiveness for so many companies, and HPE’s products and services are laser-focused on this future,” Dugan said. “It’s an exciting time to join the Board.”
Arm appointed Karen Dykstra and Jeff Sine to its board of directors. Dykstra previously served as chief financial and administrative officer of AOL, a web portal and online service provider. Before AOL, she was a partner at Plainfield Asset Management and served as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of Plainfield Direct, Plainfield’s business development company.
Sine currently serves as co-founder and partner of The Raine Group, a global merchant bank focused on technology, media and communications. Before establishing Raine, he served as vice chairman and global head of Technology, Media & Telecom Investment Banking at UBS Investment Bank, was a managing director at Morgan Stanley, and was an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and London.
Ian Foster, a professor at the University of Chicago and division director at Argonne National Laboratory, is the recipient of the 2022 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award. Foster is cited for contributions to programming and productivity in computing via the establishment of new programming models and foundational science services.
Foster has pioneered new approaches to the use of distributed computing for accelerating scientific discovery throughout his career, both within supercomputers and over networks. He has repeatedly proposed out-of-the-box ideas that proved transformative for computer science and computational science: large- scale task-parallel programming, on-demand distributed computations (“grid computing”), virtual organizations, universal data transfer, trust fabrics, and cloud management services for data-intensive science. Each has contributed to programmability and productivity in computing.
NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT, appointed Takashi Goto as head of its technology promotion team, a group set up to help productize well-developed research concepts. Goto was previously a director in the NTT R&D Planning Department and before that he served as a senior manager and senior research engineer at the NTT Information Network Laboratory Group.
Goto will also join the executive team at NTT Research, where he will be responsible for exploring the market potential for technologies under development at NTT Research, as well as NTT R&D.
Anna Grassellino, director of the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, based at Fermilab, is one of the recipients of the 2023 New Horizons in Physics Prize. She was recognized for her work and impact on particle accelerator technology and quantum information science.
“I am truly honored and extremely thankful to the Department of Energy Office of Science, for giving me the opportunity to work at the frontiers of science,” said Grassellino. “I’m forever thankful to my Fermilab, Northwestern and other SRF colleagues with whom we have made and will continue to make revolutionary discoveries.“
Zapata Computing appointed Lieutenant General Michael Groen, USMC, Retired, as an advisor to the company. Groen will be responsible for helping the company with product and go-to-market strategy for its growing public sector offering.
“Throughout my career in the public sector I have focused on driving transformational change in military capabilities. Quantum computing represents the next generation of technology that will be truly transformational,” said Groen. “There’s no question that the pace of digitally enabled defense transformation is increasing. That’s exactly why it’s so important for the U.S. government to get quantum ready now, and it’s also the reason I’m so excited about working closely with the team at Zapata.”
Cornelis Networks appointed Matt Jacobs as its chief commercial officer. Jacobs will be responsible for all go-to-market elements of the company, including revenue generation, partnerships, marketing, and corporate strategy. Jacobs was previously chief strategy officer at Penguin Computing, where he worked for over 20 years.
“I am thrilled to join Cornelis Networks at this critical inflection point for both the company and the markets we serve,” said Jacobs. “Modern HPC and AI workloads are data-driven, requiring more powerful computing platforms and enhanced networking fabrics to drive them. We have an amazing opportunity to outpace the growth of these already fast-growing markets by providing our customers an independent, platform-agnostic, scale-out interconnect that unlocks the true potential of their workloads to drive increasingly critical business outcomes.”
Rackspace Technology, a cloud technology solutions company, promoted Amar Maletira as its chief executive officer. Maletira joined Rackspace Technology in November 2020 and has served as the company’s president and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Rackspace Technology, he was CFO at Viavi Solutions.
“I thank the Board for the opportunity to lead Rackspace Technology. I am very excited about the journey ahead and look forward to leading the company as we transition to our new strategy and operating mode,” Maletira saidl. “Powered by our strong Racker culture and devotion to driving Fanatical Experience for our customers, we believe the execution of our strategy will establish the company as an industry leader.”
John Shalf, department head for computer science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was named the ISC 2023 Program Chair. Shalf brings almost 30 years of experience working in the field of high performance computing to the role, including starting his career at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in 1994.
“At ISC 2022, we finally saw first light on the new era of exascale computing with the ORNL Frontier system and the EU Lumi following closely in their footsteps, Shalf said. “But with the gradual slowing of Moore’s Law, it is time for a new beginning for HPC. We look to grow performance beyond exascale with future systems through emerging technologies and economic models such as open chiplets, heterogeneous integration, architectural specialization, and even new models of computation that look beyond today’s CMOS digital technology.”
Peter Shor, the Morss Professor of Applied Mathematics at MIT, was named a recipient of the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. He shares the $3 million prize with David Deutsch from the University of Oxford, Charles Bennett of IBM Research, and Gilles Brassard of the University of Montreal, They were recognized for their “foundational work in the field of quantum information.” For more information on the prize and the winners, click here.
“I’m very grateful to see the prize going to quantum information and quantum computation theory this year,” Shor said to MIT News. “My three co-winners were the most influential people in founding this field. I consider them friends, and they all clearly deserve it.”
Chris Stevens
BrainChip Holdings Ltd., a commercial producer of neuromorphic AI IP, appointed Chris Stevens as its vice president of worldwide sales. Stevens will leverage his sales leadership experience and semiconductor network to drive customer opportunity and revenue.
“I have tracked BrainChip’s progress closely, as I’ve been selling into the same edge AI market. I am thrilled to take this sales leadership role with confidence as Akida is uniquely superior and positioned to be the de facto standard for edge AI semiconductor IP”, said Stevens. “With use-case, market, and customer targeting, I’m certain I will contribute to further ecosystem penetration and accelerated sales.”
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation awarded the 2023 New Horizons in Physics Prize to Jeff Thompson of Princeton University. Thompson is one of six recipients to share this year’s citation for “the development of optical tweezers to realize control of individual atoms.”
Thompson shares the prize with Hannes Bernien of the University of Chicago; Manuel Endres of Caltech; Adam M. Kaufman of JILA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado; Kang-Kuen Ni of Harvard University; and Hannes Pichler of the University of Innsbruck and Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Steve Thur was appointed by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo as the assistant administrator for NOAA’s Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (NOAA Research). Thur will serve as director of NOAA’s office primarily responsible for foundational research that is key to understanding weather, climate and marine ecosystems.
“Throughout my career I have partnered with NOAA Research labs and programs to address some of the most pressing challenges along our coasts, and I have been impressed with the ingenuity and passion of the staff,” said Thur. “With the impacts of climate change being felt across our country, the need for the credible and timely science provided by NOAA Research has never been greater. I am excited and humbled to be joining these dedicated professionals in service to the American public through science.”
Shlomit Weiss and Navid Shahriari
Intel Corp. promoted Shlomit Weiss to senior vice president from her current role as senior vice president and co-general manager of the Design Engineering Group (DEG). Weiss will lead the company’s design, development, validation and manufacturing support of intellectual properties and system-on-chips.
In addition, Intel’s senior vice president Navid Shahriari was appointed as the new co-general manager to lead DEG and focus on data center products. Shahriari joined Intel in 1989 and has served in many engineering and technical leadership positions, with a reputation for driving disciplined engineering and execution excellence. Most recently, he has led the Manufacturing and Product Engineering organization.
Aliro Quantum, the first pure play quantum networking company, appointed Michael Wood as its first chief marketing officer. Wood will lead Aliro’s global marketing initiatives and will be responsible for messaging, positioning, growth marketing, demand generation, analyst, and media relations.
“Just like the modern-day Internet has done, the impact of quantum networking will be more transformative and remarkable than anything we can imagine today,” said Wood. “It’s an incredibly exciting time to join Aliro Quantum, and I look forward to helping to build, market, and brand commercially available quantum networks that establish unhackable connectivity, scale quantum computers, and operationalize distributed quantum sensing.”
The Quantum Insider appointed Stuart Woods as a business and strategy advisor to the company. Woods currently serves as managing director of Oxford Instruments NanoScience, a division of Oxford Instruments plc. He is also an executive board member of Oxford Instruments, for which he heads the environmental committee.
“I am looking forward to supporting the Quantum Insider on its commercial strategy as the executive team expand the role of the Group and the business units within it,” said Wood. “This is an exciting time for deep tech as companies are looking to accelerate their path to commercialization and need a full suite of products and services to do this at pace.”
Ilya Zaslavsky, director of the Spatial Information Systems Laboratory at San Diego Supercomputer Center and UC San Diego, was named 2022 Pi Person of the Year. This is a distinction awarded each year to an individual at SDSC who consistently demonstrates exemplary research in both science and cyberinfrastructure.
“I cannot imagine a more deserving candidate for this year’s PI Person award,” said Ilkay Altintas, founding director of WIFIRE and the division director for CICoRE, SDSC’s arm of cyberinfrastructure and convergence research and education. “Ilya has had a lasting impact over three decades, pioneering transformational methods and tools to enable scientific and societal collaborators to effectively apply geospatial data and analysis.”
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications has named 12 new fellows for the 2022-23 academic school year. The NCSA Fellowship program is a competitive program for faculty and researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which provides seed funding for new collaborations that include NCSA staff as integral contributors to the project. For a list of the new fellows and the projects they will be working on, 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.
