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The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering (2008)

Chapter: Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
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Page 127
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
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Page 128
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
×
Page 129
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
×
Page 130
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
×
Page 131
Suggested Citation:"Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members." National Research Council. 2008. The Potential Impact of High-End Capability Computing on Four Illustrative Fields of Science and Engineering. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/12451.
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Page 132

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Appendixes

Appendix A Biographical Sketches of Committee Members John W. Lyons, Chair, National Defense University, has directed two major federal science and engineer­ ing laboratories. He is a physical chemist with degrees from Harvard College and Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He began his career in research and development positions with the Monsanto Company for 18 years. In 1973 he joined the Commerce Department’s National Bureau of Standards (NBS) at Gaithersburg, Maryland. At NBS Dr. Lyons was the first director of the Center for Fire Research and then in 1978 the first director of the National Engineering Laboratory, a unit that came to include about half of the NBS programs. In 1990, Dr. Lyons was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to be the ninth director of NBS, by that time renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In September 1993, he was appointed the first permanent director of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). At ARL, Dr. Lyons managed a broad array of science and technology programs. Dr. Lyons has published four books and over 60 papers, and he holds a dozen patents. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1985. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Washington Academy of Sciences and a member of the American Chemical Society and of Sigma Xi. David Arnett is professor of astrophysics at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona. He is a theoretical astrophysicist who first demonstrated how explosive nucleosynthesis in supernovae produces the elements from carbon through iron and nickel. He constructed quantitative theoretical models of evolving massive stars and showed that the ejecta produce a good fit to the abundance of heavy elements in the galaxy. His research interests include nuclear astrophysics, formation of neutron stars and black holes, high-performance computers, theoretical physics, hydrodynamics, thermonuclear burning, stellar evolution, computer graphics, and computer modeling. Dr. Arnett is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Alok N. Choudhary is chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Northwestern University. He also holds an adjunct appointment with the Kellogg School of Management in market- ing and technology inno­va­tion. In 2000, he cofounded Accelchip, Inc., a developer of electronic design 129

130 THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF HIGH-END CAPABILITY COMPUTING automation tools and services. Dr. Choudhary is the founder and director of the Center for Ultra-scale Computing and Infor­mation Security (CUCIS). His research interests are in high-performance comput- ing and communication systems, power aware systems, computer architecture, and high-performance I/O systems and software, and their applications in many domains including information processing and scientific computing. His interests include the design and evaluation of architectures and soft- ware systems, high-performance servers, high-performance databases, and input-output and software protection/security. Phillip Colella is a senior mathematician and group leader of the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group (ANAG) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The mission of ANAG is the development of advanced numerical algorithms and software for partial differential equations integrated with the a ­ pplication of the software to problems of independent scientific and engineering interest. The primary focus of its work is the development of high-resolution and adaptive finite difference methods for partial differential equations in complex geometries, with applications to internal combustion engines and other industrial problems. In 1998, Dr. Colella was awarded the Sidney Fernbach Award from the IEEE Computer Society for his outstanding work in numerical algorithm development and parallel code design and implementation. The award is given annually to computational scientists who have achieved breakthroughs in high-performance computing. Dr. Colella’s award cites his “fundamental contributions in the development of software methodologies used to solve numerical partial differential equations, and their application to substantially expand our understanding of shock physics and other fluid dynamics problems.” Dr. Colella is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Joel L. Cracraft is Lamont Curator of Birds and curator in charge of the Division of Vertebrate Z ­ oology and Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History. He is also an adjunct professor in the Depart­ment of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and in the Department of Biology at the City University of New York. His research interests include diversification in birds, d ­ iversification and evolution, and systematic and biogeographic theory and methods. John A. Dutton is professor emeritus in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at the Pennsylvania State University and a principal in Storm Exchange, Inc. His research interests involve dynamic meteo- rology, including dynamical systems, spectral models, predictability, climate theory, and global change. Dr. Dutton’s interests span a number of topics in nonlinear atmospheric dynamics, with a current focus on the properties of attractors of hydrodynamical systems, on problems in predictability, and on global properties of atmospheric flow. Scott V. Edwards is a professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He studies the evolutionary biology of birds and their relatives, combining field, museum, and genomics approaches to understand the basis of avian diversity, evolution, and behavior. His research involves population genetics; geographic variation and genome evolution; and systematics. He is a past president of the Society of Systematic Biologists. David J. Erickson III is a senior research staff member and director of climate and carbon research in the Center for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He is also an adjunct professor in the Division of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University. Dr. Erickson’s research interests include global climate modeling, numerical

APPENDIX A 131 modeling of atmospheric chemistry, and modeling the global air-sea exchange of energy, momentum, trace gases, and particles. Teresa L. Head-Gordon is an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research program encompasses the development of general computational and experimental methodologies applied to chemistry and biology in areas such as protein aggregation disease, biomaterials assembly, and glassy dynamics of nanomaterials. She is the recipient of an IBM SUR award (2001) and was Schlumberger Visiting Professor at Cambridge University in 2005-2006. Dr. Head-Gordon serves as editorial advisory board member for the Journal of Computational Chem- istry and editorial board member for the SIAM book series on computational science and engineering (2004-present). Lars E. Hernquist is professor and chair of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His r ­ esearch interests include theoretical studies of dynamical processes in cosmology and galaxy forma- tion and galaxy evolution, numerical simulations of stellar dynamical and hydrodynamical systems, and investigations of the physics of compact objects, particularly neutron stars and the interplay between thermal and magnetic processes in strongly magnetized neutron stars. Prof. Hernquist is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. George E. Keller II is retired senior corporate research fellow at the Union Carbide Corporation and now vice chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Technology, Research and Innovation Center (MATRIC), an i ­ndependent, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) corporation headquartered in West Virginia. He is noted for invention and insightful analysis of novel separation processes. His expertise is in chemical and petroleum separa- tion technologies, including distillation, membranes, adsorption, and extraction, and he is ­coauthor of the book Separation Process Technology. Dr. Keller is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Nipam H. Patel is Howard Hughes Investigator and professor of genetics and development and of integrative biology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology of the University of California at Berkeley. His research program centers on the study of the evolution of development mechanisms with a focus on the genes that regulate segmentation and regionalization of the body plan. He is particularly interested in understanding how certain steps in patterns formation that require protein diffusion in Drosophila are accomplished in those insects and crustaceans in which cellularization of the growing embryos would seem to preclude formation of gradients by diffusion. His group also investigates the role of homeotic genes in generating body plan diversification in crustaceans. He is also investigating the function of the Drosophila segmentation genes during neuronal development and how they may have contributed to the evolution of neural complexity. Mary E. Rezac is professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Kansas State Uni- versity. Her fields of research include mass transport, polymer science, membrane separation processes, hybrid system (reactor-separator) designs, and applications to biological systems, environmental control, and novel materials. Ronald B. Smith is professor of geology and geophysics and of mechanical engineering at Yale Uni- versity and director of the Yale Center for Earth Observation. He leads Yale’s program in mesoscale meteorology and regional climate, which includes atmospheric dynamics, observations of the atmosphere

132 THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF HIGH-END CAPABILITY COMPUTING using aircraft and satellite, hydrometeorology using stable isotopes of water and theories of evaporation and rain, and satellite remote sensing of landscape changes and climate sensitivity. James M. Stone is a professor in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University, with a joint appointment in the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics. His research group studies gas dynamics in a wide variety of astrophysical systems, from protostars to clusters of galaxies. As part of this effort, the group develops, tests, and applies numerical algorithms for astrophysical gas dynamics on high-performance computers. John C. Wooley is associate vice chancellor for research at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where he is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and in the Department of Pharmacology at the School of Medicine. He is also a research associate professor of biophysics at John Hopkins Medical School, a member of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) Resource for Macromolecular Modeling and Bioinformatics, director of NSF’s Biological Sciences Advisory Committee, and a member of the advisory committee for the National Biomedical Computa- tion Resource. Prior to moving to UCSD, Dr. Wooley spent time in government service at NSF, NIH, and DOE. His research focuses on structure-function relationships in protein-nuclei acid complexes and the architecture of chromatin and ribonucleoproteins. He collaborated on the first stages of the Human Genome Project and established the first federal programs in bioinformatics and computational biology. As associate vice chancellor, he is also taking the lead in a variety of biotechnology and computational biology projects, including centers for structural genomics, bioinformatics, cell signaling, biomimetic materials, and computation science/distributed computing. In general, he is creating and facilitating new interdisciplinary research and education efforts that cross traditional interdisciplinary boundaries and new scientific teams from the university and partner institutions.

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Many federal funding requests for more advanced computer resources assume implicitly that greater computing power creates opportunities for advancement in science and engineering. This has often been a good assumption. Given stringent pressures on the federal budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) are seeking an improved approach to the formulation and review of requests from the agencies for new computing funds.

This book examines, for four illustrative fields of science and engineering, how one can start with an understanding of their major challenges and discern how progress against those challenges depends on high-end capability computing (HECC). The four fields covered are:

  1. atmospheric science
  2. astrophysics
  3. chemical separations
  4. evolutionary biology

This book finds that all four of these fields are critically dependent on HECC, but in different ways. The book characterizes the components that combine to enable new advances in computational science and engineering and identifies aspects that apply to multiple fields.

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