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!
ADIA Lab, an independent research institute dedicated to basic and applied research in data and computational sciences, appointed four international scientists as ADIA Lab Senior Fellows. The Senior Fellows will each conduct a research project and publish a final paper related to specific topics identified by ADIA Lab.
“Each of our inaugural group of Senior Fellows are exceptional scientists and widely recognized as experts in their fields,” Dr. Horst Simon, Director of ADIA Lab, said. “One of our key objectives at ADIA Lab is to support the development of cutting-edge research into topics with broad and global impact. We eagerly anticipate the findings of our Senior Fellows’ research projects, as we are confident they will make important contributions to data and computational sciences.”
Chris Boehmler
Quantum Computing Inc. a nanophotonic-based quantum technology company, appointed Chris Boehmler as its chief financial officer. Boehmler brings to the company over 20 years of financial experience, including investment banking, planning & analysis, accounting operations, financial and SEC reporting, systems integrations and financial risks & controls.
“Importantly, I officially welcome Chris Boehmler to the QCi officer ranks,” said Robert Liscouski, CEO of Quantum Computing Inc. “Over the past year, Chris has not only surpassed our high expectations for meticulous financial acumen, but he has also proven to be a tireless study of our technology, our products, and future applications. Chris’ impressive background and proven track record in financial leadership, combined with his deep understanding of our company and its technology, will be instrumental in guiding QCi’s financial growth and driving shareholder value within the rapidly emerging quantum computing landscape.”
Ido Bukspan
Pliops, a provider of data processors for cloud and enterprise data centers, appointed Ido Bukspan as its chief executive officer and board member. Bukspan most recently served as senior vice president of Chip Design at NVIDIA.
“I’m excited to join Pliops and continue to integrate the advanced technology it developed – together with its founders, Uri, Moshe and Aryeh, and the company’s leaders and employees,” Bukspan said. “Pliops is experiencing an excellent momentum for continued growth and expansion.”
Thomas Fedorko and Doug Norton
Inspire Semiconductor Holdings Inc., a chip design company, promoted Doug Norton, formerly vice president of business development, to chief marketing officer. He is also president of the Society of HPC Professionals and a member of the RISC-V SIG-HPC and marketing committee.
In addition, InspireSemi promoted Thomas Fedorko, formerly vice president of operations, to chief operating officer. Fedorko will oversee InspireSemi’s day-to-day operational functions including maintaining key supply chain relationships, managing production scale-up, and new product introductions.
Richard Gerber
Richard Gerber, HPC Department Head and Senior Science Advisor at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was appointed as the Hardware and Integration Director for the US Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project. Gerber will oversee software deployment and application integration at DOE compute facilities, as well as developer training and compute allocations for research projects.
“I’m happy to have the opportunity to help get capable exascale computing environments into the hands of scientists and engineers,” said Gerber. “ECP has been a driving force behind preparing applications, software, and tools for exascale systems, and I’m looking forward to joining the team and continuing the work of realizing the full potential of these efforts by enabling scientists to run productively on DOE’s largest supercomputers.”
Mardís Heimisdóttir, Tracey Pewtner, and Elísabet Árnadóttir
atNorth, the Nordic colocation, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence service provider, appointed Mardís Heimisdóttir as the company’s director of strategy implementation. Mardís will contribute to atNorth’s significant growth plans by developing and managing strategic initiatives to drive business performance.
In addition, atNorth appointed Tracey Pewtner as its marketing director. With over 13 years of experience in the data center industry, Pewtner joins atNorth to increase market awareness and bolster its significant growth plans through a strong sustainability profile and intelligent creative content.
Lastly, atNorth appointed Elísabet Árnadóttir as the company’s director of security and compliance. Árnadóttir previously worked as a security officer for Rapyd and Advania and also as a consultant for atNorth. Árnadóttir brings 10 years of experience to the company in the information and cyber security sectors.
Amber Huffman and Zaid Kahn
The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), a non-profit organization bringing hyperscale innovations to all, appointed Amber Huffman to its board of directors. Huffman is a Principal Engineer at Google responsible for leading industry engagement in the data center ecosystem.
In addition, OCP appointed Zaid Kahn to its board of directors. Zaid is a general manager at Microsoft and is responsible for cloud and AI advanced systems engineering. Zaid has been heavily involved in OCP since joining as a Board member in 2021.
Werner Knoblich
SUSE, a provider of enterprise-grade open source solutions, appointed Werner Knoblich as its chief revenue officer. Most recently, Knoblich was global CRO at SaaS provider Mambu, and prior to that, he led the Europe, Middle East and Africa business at Red Hat for 18 years.
“I’m deeply passionate about open source and believe it’s the best way to operate,” Knoblich said. “In a meritocracy, the best idea wins. SUSE has been a leading open source champion for years and I am looking forward to helping our customers, partners and community.”
Rom Kosla and Bethany Mayer
Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) appointed Rom Kosla as its chief information officer. Kosla comes to HPE from Retail Business Services, having served as the company’s executive vice president, IT, and chief information officer. Prior to Retail Business Services, Kosla was the senior vice president and CIO of Corporate and Enterprise Solutions at PepsiCo.
In addition, HPE appointed Bethany Mayer, former president and CEO of Ixia, to HPE’s board of directors. She will also serve as a member of the board’s technology committee. Before Hewlett-Packard Company’s 2015 separation into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. and prior to joining Ixia in 2014, Mayer led the expansion of Hewlett-Packard Company’s networking business as senior vice president and general manager.
Petros Koumoutsakos, the Herbert S. Winokur Jr. Professor for Computing in Science and Engineering at Harvard University, is the recipient of the 2023 edition of the PRACE HPC Excellence Award. Koumoutsakos was recognized for his contributions in the area of high performance computing and his foundational work on the development of advanced modeling techniques coupled with innovations in AI and machine learning.
“I am deeply grateful to PRACE and the entire HPC community, not only for this incredible honor, but also for decades of amazing, sustained support of the research in my group,” Koumoutsakos said. “Throughout my career, I have been blessed with exceptional students and collaborators and this award belongs to each and every one of them.”
Dr. Sarah Neuwirth, Deputy Group Leader of the Modular Supercomputing and Quantum Computing Group from Goethe University Frankfurt, has been awarded the 2023 PRACE Ada Lovelace Award.
“I feel very humbled that my work is being honored with the PRACE Ada Lovelace Award, which is a great medium to raise awareness for diversity in HPC and science,” Neuwirth said. “Unfortunately, my own experiences during my undergraduate and doctoral years have made me painfully aware of how much women still struggle in STEM disciplines. Therefore, my greatest dream is to inspire the next generations through teaching, research, and outreach to encourage more women and underrepresented groups to pursue careers in HPC and related STEM subjects.”
Kunle Olukotun, a professor at Stanford University, is the recipient of the ACM-IEEE CS Eckert-Mauchly Award for contributions and leadership in the development of parallel systems, especially multicore and multithreaded processors.
Olukotun was a lead designer of the “chip multiprocessor” known today as a “multicore processor.” Olukotun’s work in the early 1900s demonstrated the performance advantages of multicore processors over the existing microprocessor designs. His multicore design eventually became the industry standard.
Rollin Thomas
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) engineer Rollin Thomas has been selected as a Project Jupyter Distinguished Contributor in appreciation of “substantial contributions to Jupyter itself in both quality and quantity over at least two years.”
“More and more users coming to NERSC expect to be able to use Jupyter to manage their research workflows similar to how they do it on their laptop or smaller clusters,” said Thomas. “Jupyter is already a key component of modern data science infrastructures in so many contexts. Supercomputers help people with complex data sets, so why shouldn’t you be able to use Jupyter to do data science on a supercomputer?”
Mari Walls
Mari Walls, formerly the first President of the new Tampere University and Director General of the Natural Resources Institute of Finland, joined CSC IT Center For Science Ltd., in Finland to lead cooperation with research organizations and academic partnerships.
“I am excited about this new role in driving forward national and international research collaboration, service development and impact. CSC is an internationally respected player and CSC’s strong role in the LUMI consortium, for example, will provide a boost for moving forward with collaborative and development projects,” Walls said. “I look forward to becoming part of the CSC team.”
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.
