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!
Ilkay Altintaş was elected as an Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers Computer Society 2023 Board of Governors member for a three-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2023. Altintaş currently serves as the chief data science officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego.
“The latest strategic plan of IEEE includes ‘providing value to the whole community’, which comes at a time when we have complex societal problems to solve and less than ideal workable solutions,” Altintaş said. “IEEE Computer Society has unrealized potential to push progress forward through the integration of technology and inclusion through dialogue and collaboration throughout the research and education cycle. I’m excited to apply my experience in translational programs, experiential education and convergence research to foster programs toward long-term, trusted partnerships with underrepresented and cross-sector communities, and to contribute to the discussion on an inclusive approach to identify, prioritize and co-create solutions, and diversify the pipeline of students and researchers in ways that expands our impact.”
Dana Anderson, William Clark, and Laura Hale
ColdQuanta, the global quantum ecosystem solutions provider, appointed the active chief technology officer Dr. Dana Anderson as its chief strategy officer. As CSO, he will be guiding the company’s long-term quantum strategy. Anderson is a co-founder and the former chief executive officer of ColdQuanta.
In addition, ColdQuanta appointed Dr. William Clark as its vice president of quantum development. Clark joined ColdQuanta from General Dynamics Mission Systems, where he was a senior engineering fellow and the founder and director of the Quantum Laboratory and Quantum Center of Excellence.
Laura Hale joined ColdQuanta as its vice president of government programs. Hale brings exceptional leadership experience to the company having held positions with NASA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the Space Development Agency, and various elements of the US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
Torsten Hoefler, a ETH Zurich professor, is the recipient of the 2022 Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award. The IEEE Computer society recognized Hoefler with the award for his pioneering contributions to large-scale parallel processing systems and supercomputers. Hoefler will be honored during the SC22 proceedings (link to session).
“I am genuinely grateful to my mentors and the scientific community for their support and encouragement,” said Hoefler. “I hope to continue Sidney Fernbach’s innovative path by combining computer architecture and applications.”
Jim Jeffers
Jim Jeffers, an accomplished computer engineer and expert in the field of high-end visualization, has joined Nvidia as senior director, product management, HPC (High Performance Computing). Prior to joining Nvidia, Jeffers held a number of high-level engineering roles at Intel spanning more than a decade. In a LinkedIn post, Jeffers shared, “I am beyond excited to start my new position […] at Nvidia! I plan to do my utmost working with customers, collaborators and our team across the globe to deliver on the promise of ExaScale and beyond with world changing platforms including Grace CPUs and Nvidia high performance GPUs all tapped with powerful HPC development tools and OmniVerse to solve humankind’s most pressing problems in climate change, medicine, sustainable energy, the physical sciences and more through massive computation and the world’s best AI solutions.”
SiPearl, the company designing the high-performance low-power microprocessor for European exascale supercomputers, appointed Sébastien Kamphuis as its chief information officer. Kamphuis will be responsible for leading SiPearl’s IT organization, including managing SiPearl’s data centers, telecom infrastructure and research and development centers network.
Kamphuis brings 15 years of experience in the IT industry to SiPearl. He started his career working at ICS as a systems & network administrator in 2006. In 2012, he joined Sogeti, the IT services branch of Capgemini, and in 2019, he joined Engie.
Mahesh Karanth
Achronix Semiconductor Corporation, a solutions provider of high-performance FPGAs and embedded FPGA IP technology, appointed Mahesh Karanth as its chief financial officer. Karanth comes to Achronix with more than 30 years of financial experience at multi-national public and private companies. Most recently, Karanth served as CFO of Rockley Photonics.
“As semiconductor companies look for new ways to differentiate their products, Achronix offers a unique value proposition as the only independent supplier of high-end FPGA and eFPGA IP solutions designed to address a wide variety of data acceleration applications,” Karanth said. “In a dynamic industry, Achronix is well-positioned for rapid growth. I look forward to being part of the leadership team that is primed to drive Achronix through this exciting next phase and beyond.”
Christine Kirkpatrick joined the board of research data and information of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Kirkpatrick currently serves as director for the Research Data Services at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego.
“It’s an honor to join this panel of experts to focus on emerging issues related to the management, policy and use of research data,” Kirkpatrick said. “Through my vantage point as a Research Data Services provider and researcher, I can elevate current challenges and areas that need further examination to a national and international level.”
Bill Mannel
Established tech leader Bill Mannel begins a new role as chief technologist for Americas HPC & AI solution sales at HPE, following eight years as vice president and general manager overseeing HPC and AI activities for the company. Mannel came to HPE via the tech giant’s aquisition of SGI, where Mannel held director and managerial positions for 13 years and was responsible for the compute and storage business unit prior to the acquisition.
“I’ll be working closely with customers to develop HPC and AI solutions for their toughest problems, by merging science, technology and speed,” Mannel shared in a LinkedIn post. “Success in this position means leveraging HPE’s award-winning Exascale technologies across widely diverse workloads and markets. Initial market focus will be Health & Life Sciences, Manufacturing (including Energy) and Financial Services; initial territory focus will be central U.S. but I’ll help throughout the Americas. I’ll continue to support key relationships as Executive Sponsor such as NASA and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Engine rev’ed up!”
ColdQuanta also appointed Steve Matthews as its vice president of sales and business development for quantum information platforms. Matthews brings 20 years of enterprise software sales experience to the company. He previously worked at the quantum computing software company, QC Ware.
Lastly, Dr. Chris Wood was promoted to chief technology officer from his current role of vice president of photonic technologies. As CTO, Wood will guide ColdQuanta’s technology and new product strategy, which includes overseeing the critical transition from research to engineering to product.
Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka, the director of Riken Center for Computational Science, received the 2022 IEEE Computer Society Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award. Matsuoka was recognized for his “long-term global leadership in supercomputing system design, such as TSUBAME and Fugaku.” He will be honored during the SC22 proceedings (link to session).
Matsuoka has been the director of the Riken Center for Computational Science since April 2018. He was specially appointed as a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and was the leader of the TSUBAME series of supercomputers.
Mark Miller and Paul Edmondson
Green Revolution Cooling (GRC), the leader in single-phase immersion cooling for data centers, appointed Mark Miller as its director of business development for the public sector. Miller brings to GRC a strong background leading public sector sales for companies including HP and Compaq.
In addition, GRC appointed Paul Edmondson as its vice president of sales for the EMEA region. Edmondson brings over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, including having served as sales director for Technimove and commercial director and enterprise account director for Cinos, Ltd.
Michael E. Papka, a deputy associate laboratory director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, has been recognized with the 2022 Argonne Board of Governors’ Pinnacle of Education Award for his dedication and contributions to science education outreach activities aimed at inspiring youth.
In addition, Papka joined the University of Illinois Chicago’s Computer Science department as a professor, where he brings years of interdisciplinary research and teaching experience to the university. He will also join the university’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory.
Regina (Gina) Rameika will be joining the DOE’s Office of Science as the Associate Director for the Office of High Energy Physics on November 7, 2022. Rameika will leave her post at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), where she spent much of her career in neutrino sciences and experimental particle physics. Her responsibilities have included managing technical detector construction projects to leading the international science collaboration, DUNE or Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, which plans to carry out the world-leading experiment currently under construction as part of the DOE Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF)/DUNE-US Project. Gina has a Ph.D. and B.A. in Physics from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), a newly launched independent research center in Abu Dhabi dedicated to basic and applied research in data and computational science, appointed Dr. Horst Simon as director of ADIA Lab. Simon joined ADIA Lab from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he served for more than 10 years as deputy laboratory director for research and chief research officer.
Most recently, Simon served as senior advisor to the director of the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, a program of the US Department of Energy. He received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Gordon Bell Prize twice for outstanding achievements in high performance computing and has received the ACM SC Test of Time Award and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Computational Science and Engineering Career Award.
Anders Svensson
atNorth, the pan-Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Anders Svensson to its board of directors. Svensson brings years of leadership experience having served in senior executive management and board-level positions. In 2014, he cofounded the strategy, sourcing and M&A advisory firm Burnt Oak Partners Nordics.
“I am delighted to join the atNorth Board of Directors at this pivotal time of expansion for the business and industry as a whole,” said Svensson. “At a time when a shift in digital transformation is fueling the need for high-performance computing solutions, atNorth’s vision to leverage innovative data center design to provide sustainable and highly scalable computing solutions across Europe is exceptionally unique. I look forward to playing a critical role in supporting the team at this time of real strategic growth.
Mark Templeton
Mark Templeton was posthumously inducted into the Phil Kaufman Hall of Fame. Templeton was the former managing director of investment firm Scientific Ventures, and a Lanza techVentures investment partner and board member. He also co-founded Artisan Components Physical IP in 1991, where he served as president and chief executive officer.
“Mark Templeton’s legacy of business innovation and creativity endures after his untimely death at age 57,” said Bob Smith, executive director of the ESD Alliance. “As a director and board member of numerous technology companies, he was instrumental in driving semiconductor intellectual property market growth by spearheading technical innovations and developing new business models.”
Rama Vasudevan, a research scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. At ORNL, Vasudevan leads the Data NanoAnalytics group at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, CNMS, which is a DOE Nanoscale Science Research Center.
Vasudevan was cited by the APS Topical Group on Data Science for “pioneering and visionary development of open-sourced physics-based machine learning methods in atomic-scale and mesoscopic imaging, and their application in physics.”
Mike Wall
Verge.io, the company with a simpler way to virtualize data centers, appointed Mike Wall as chairman of its board of directors. Wall was chairman and chief executive officer of Amplidata, an object storage software company, and led its sale to Western Digital in March 2015. He’s also served as general manager of Intel’s Storage Group, where he led the industry’s transition to storage systems designed with commodity microprocessors and chipsets.
“I am honored to be part of the effort to help organizations find simpler, more efficient and less costly ways to deploy their infrastructure,” said Wall. “The IT industry has changed dramatically in the past few years, as organizations rely more on cloud platforms, and high-level IT talent is growing scarce. Verge.io addresses these trends and more.”
Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) appointed Ian Wilson as its chief innovation officer. Wilson brings his diverse knowledge of enterprise innovation in deep technology to NAG, having previously served as global head of AI at HSBC and driven product innovation at several other leading businesses.
“Joining NAG at this pivotal point in its growth journey represents a unique opportunity for me to bring together all the experience of my career to date,” said Wilson. “The enhanced Innovation function will exploit NAG’s huge reputation and vast technical IP to create significant enterprise value. I am honoured to be trusted with such a transformational responsibility.”
The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) recognized Andi Gu, Chirag Jain, Bin Ouyang, and Giulia Palermo with the High Performance Computing Achievement Awards. The award recognizes four early-career scientists who have made significant contributions to scientific computation using NERSC resources.
The awardees were cited for their work in a variety of fields, including astrophysics, genomics, and materials research. Gu, Jain, and Ouyang were honored for High Impact Scientific Achievement. Palermo received the award for Innovative Use of High Performance Computing. For more on each awardee, click here.
2022 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society recognized Marcin Copik of ETH Zurich and Masado Alexander Ishii of the University of Utah as the recipients of the 2022 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowships.
Copik is recognized for incorporating the Function-as-a-Service programming model into HPC applications and bringing high performance into serverless to cut costs and increase the efficiency of supercomputing. Ishii is recognized for developing lightweight, dimension-parameterized, parallel meshing algorithms with a focus on scalability and improving total time-to-solution for engineering applications.
The NEC C&C Foundation awarded the 2022 C&C Prize to two groups for their contributions to developing easy-to-use supercomputers of high-performance, low cost, energy savings, and actual application performance by incorporating GPUs in supercomputers as a world’s first, and to establishing quantum information science and formulating the QKD protocol that will soon make quantum cryptographic communications practical. Dr. Satoshi Matsuoka will represent Group A and Dr. Charles H. Bennett and Prof. Gilles Brassard will represent Group B. Each recipient will be recognized with a certificate of merit and a plaque. For more information, click here.
2022 DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows
The Department of Energy announced two national laboratory scientists as DOE Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellows. Marcela Carena of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory was recognized for “leadership and influential contributions to particle physics, including novel theoretical ideas and strategies for HEP experiments related to the Higgs boson, dark matter and electroweak baryogenesis, and promoting Latin American participation in DOE-hosted experiments.”
Dr. Sheng Dai of Oak Ridge National Laboratory was recognized for “pioneering advances in development of functional materials for separation science, energy storage, catalysis, and other energy-related applications and for excellence in leading team science and mentoring the next generation of researchers.”
OIF 2022-2023 Board of Director Positions and Officers
OIF, where the optical networking industry’s interoperability work gets done, announced its newly elected board of directors and officers. The technical and market awareness and education committee chairs were elected at the Q322 Technical Committee Meeting and the board positions were elected via an email ballot. For more on each newly elected member, click here.
“As a member-driven organization, the Board and Officers are critical to furthering OIF’s mission to drive innovation and interoperability in today’s market,” said Cathy Liu, President of OIF. “We congratulate our new and returning members serving on the Board of Directors and Officers and thank them for their continued commitment to OIF.”
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.
