We previously broke the news that Richard Dracott had stepped in as Acting Director of Intel’s European exascale labs. This month we follow up on that story with news of key permanent appointments that will shape the future of Intel’s exascale efforts.
Karl Solchenbach
Karl Solchenbach has joined Intel (Nov 1) as new director for the European Exascale Labs. Karl joins Intel from Scapos AG, a joint venture with the Fraunhofer Society, which he founded and directed. Scapos AG is dedicated to transferring innovative software products from the Fraunhofer Institutes to the technical computing market. From 2003 to 2008, Karl worked for Intel as director for Cluster Software and Technologies. He came to Intel by way of Intel’s acquisition of Pallas in 2003. Pallas became the Intel Cologne Software Lab, which lead the development of cluster tools and grid technology in Intel. In 1991, Karl was the co-founder of Pallas, and served as its managing director until 2003. During that time, Pallas became a leading HPC software company with a strong focus on Cluster and Grid technology.
Marie Christine Sawley
Marie Christine Sawley will be joining Intel on December 1st as the new director for the Exascale Computing Research Center in Versailles, reporting to Karl. Marie Christine joins from the Institute of Particle Physics at ETH in Zurich, where she works on the massive computing requirements of the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at CERN. From 2003 to 2008 Marie Christine was the General Manager of CSCS, the Swiss national supercomputing centre. Previous roles include being the head of the User Consulting Group at the Scientific Computing Centre of the EPFL and the Support Team manager of the CRAY-EPFL Partnership program on Parallel Applications. She was one of the proponents and drivers for establishing the Vital-IT centre of the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics in 2002. Marie was also involved in the PRACE preparatory project and has consulted on a variety of other international projects in Europe.
As we’ve highlighted in earlier editions of The Exascale Report, Intel is making a serious collaborative investment in exascale research in Europe. And it’s collaboration that makes the labs special. For example, Intel’s Richard Dracott explains that “In France, we have William Jalby, Professor of the University of Versailles as the Chief Technologist with whom Marie Christine obviously works closely — since William essentially is the technical manager of the lab.”
