SC18 Perennials Keep Coming Back

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Over at the SC18 Blog, Mike Bernhardt writes that the a small group known as the Perennials have attended the conference from the very beginning. There’s no doubt that they’ll be back this year for the show, which takes place Nov. 11-16 in Dallas.

Someone once described the SC conferences to me as the keystone of HPC community relationships and networking. Each year since 1988, SC has been bringing together scientists, researchers, academics, government funding agents and policy makers, students, and vendors for one exciting week noted for an incredible technical program and world-class exhibition hall.

This year is the official 30th anniversary of the SC conference, and for one small group of dedicated professionals, 2018 actually marks their 31st consecutive attendance at SC. That group is affectionately referred to as the SC Perennials.

From meager beginnings with fewer than 1,500 attendees in an Orlando, Florida hotel ballroom, to this year’s event in Dallas, Texas (expected to attract 11,000 participants) the SC Perennials have weathered the test of time, demonstrating a solid commitment to HPC and an unwavering support for this amazing conference.

The 17 SC Perennials: Yesterday and Today

  • Bernhardt, Mike. In 1988, Mike was with Multiflow Computer as a Manager of Marketing Communications. Today – He is a member of the communications staff at ORNL and manages communications and outreach for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project.
  • Boas, Bill. In 1988, Bill was with Alliant Mini-Supercomputing/UltraNetwork Technologies. Today – He is Chairman and Vice President of Business Development at System Fabric Works.
  • Bongiorno, Vito. In 1988, Vito was leading the Benchmark Services group at Cray Research, Inc. Today – Vito is enjoying a well-deserved retirement.
  • Bottum, Jim. In 1988, Jim worked at NCSA as a deputy director. Today – He is a Research Professor at Clemson University and a Presidential Fellow with Internet2. He also serves as a Principal Investigator on a grant with a team of HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to advance their cyberinfrastructure capabilities and a co-PI on a grant with AIHEC (American Indian Higher Education Consortium) to advance cyberinfrastructure capabilities in Tribal Colleges and Universities.
  • Brown, Maxine. In 1988, Maxine was with the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. She was an SC’88 volunteer and hosted the Visualization Theater. Today – Maxine is Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Dongarra, Jack. In 1988, Jack was working at Argonne National Laboratory. Today – He is a professor at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory and heads the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the University of Tennessee. Jack is also a recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award.
  • Gustafson, John. In 1988, John was at Sandia National Laboratories. Today – John is a professor in the school of computing at the National University of Singapore and a Visiting Scientist at Singapore’s Agency of Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR).
  • Johnson, Fred. In 1988, Fred was the Associate Director for Computing in the Information Technology Laboratory at NIST. Today – Fred is retired from the DOE Office of Science where he was the program manager for computer science research in 2009. He then served several years as a senior consultant to the NNSA/ASC program and helped develop the justification and strategy for the Exascale Computing Project.
  • Kelly, Anne Marie. In 1988, Anne Marie was working for the IEEE Computer Society. She was only one month in her new job at the Computer Society when her boss told her to travel to Florida to meet with George Michael and Steve Lundstrom to plan a new conference on supercomputing. (That was Supercomputing ’88). Today – Anne Marie is Associate Executive Director/Director of Governance for the IEEE Computer Society (one of the sponsors of the SC Conferences).
  • Levesque, John. In 1988, John worked for Pacific Sierra Research managing a group of developers/code optimizers.
    Today – he works in the CTO office at Cray, Inc. as the Director of Cray’s Supercomputing Center of Excellence.
  • Malony, Allen. In 1988, Alan was a senior software engineer at the Center for Supercomputing Research and
    Development and a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Today – He is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Oregon, and CEO and Director, ParaToools, Inc. Recently, Alan was appointed as the Director of the newly established Oregon Advanced Computing Institute for Science and Society (OACISS).
  • Miura, Kenichi (Ken). In 1988, Ken was a director of the Computational Research Division (CRD) at Fujitsu America Inc. in San Jose, developing new vector algorithms and conducting benchmarks for Fujitsu’s VP series supercomputer systems, and also supporting the technical team at Amdahl Corporation which was marketing the VP Series in the USA. Today – He is a Professor Emeritus at the National Institute of informatics, an Emeritus Fellow at Fujitsu Laboratories, and an Affiliate at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
  • Poole, Stephen. In 1988, Stephen worked at IBM in Special Programs Development in Kingston, NY, working on architectures and mathematical algorithms. Today – He is the Chief Architect for Future Systems at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the office of the Associate Director for Theory, Simulation, and Computing.
  • Roskies, Ralph. In 1988, Ralph was a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh and co-scientific Director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Today – He is retired from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and has taken on a half-time role at the University of Pittsburgh – where he is currently the Vice Chancellor for Research Computing.
  • Simon, Horst. In 1988, Horst was working for CSC (Computer Sciences Corp.) at NASA Ames. Today – He is the Deputy Director for Research and Chief Research Officer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
  • Stout, Quentin. In 1988, Quentin was an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan. Today – He is at the University of Michigan where he is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering.
  • Wallach, Steve. In 1988, Steve attended the conference as Co-founder and Vice President of Convex Computer Corporation. He had the opportunity to ask Seymour Cray a question following that historical keynote, “What’s This About Gallium Arsenide?” Today – He is with Micron Technology. Steve is a recipient of the prestigious IEEE Computer Society’s Seymour Cray Award.

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