Michael Parks
Oak Ridge, TN — The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has named Michael Parks director of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division within ORNL’s Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate. His hiring became effective March 13.
Parks’ responsibilities include directing a team of accomplished scientists in basic and applied research in advanced computing systems, data and artificial intelligence, and mathematics in computation. The division’s researchers work to solve problems beyond the reach of most computers and to put more powerful software tools into the hands of students, teachers, government researchers and industrial scientists.
“I’m thrilled to join ORNL during this exciting time,” Parks said. “The Computer Science and Mathematics Division has an impressive history and a bright future.”
Before joining ORNL, Parks spent 18 years at Sandia National Laboratories as a staff member and as manager of Sandia’s Computational Mathematics department. He earned a doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005, where he held a fellowship in computational science and engineering. He also holds a master’s degree in computer science and bachelor’s degrees in physics and computer science from Virginia Tech, where he was a Goldwater Scholar.
Parks’ research interests include numerical analysis, scientific computing, multiscale modeling and linear solvers. He serves as an associate editor for the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ (SIAM) Journal on Numerical Analysis and for Springer’s Journal of Peridynamics and Nonlocal Modeling. He is a member of SIAM and of the U.S. Association for Computational Mechanics.
ORNL’s most recent computing achievements include the launch of Frontier, the first exascale supercomputer and fastest computer in the world, and continued investments in quantum information science, artificial intelligence and microelectronics. ORNL also leads the Quantum Science Center, a DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Center that performs cutting-edge research to overcome key roadblocks in the development of quantum technologies.
