As chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division, Walt Brooks oversees the entire gamut of high performance computing work done within the division, and is working to transform the vision, mission, and direction for NAS. His focus on building collaborative relationships with other NASA groups, industry partners, and colleagues at universities and other government agencies reflects his dedication to making NAS a national resource for expertise in distributed heterogeneous computing.

Brooks' history at NASA Ames began in 1977. During his early career he led groups that simulated and designed space science missions such as Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF) and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). In 1993 he was selected to lead the Space Station redesign management team. He served as both Assistant Director of Aerophysics for Ames and Chief of the Information Systems Programs and Projects Division before becoming acting NAS Division Chief in summer 1995. Brooks later worked as senior scientist for the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science Center (RIACS), where he represented Ames in NASA's Earth Science Technology Enterprise at Goddard Space Flight Center. In this role, he developed strategy roadmaps for developing advanced information systems technology.

Brooks received a doctorate in physics from Stevens Institute of Technology, performing research for his thesis at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He earned a master's degree from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1991.

Title of Presentation: On the State of the HPC Industry

Abstract: The Director of Intel's High Performance Computing division will review the state of the HPC industry. This will include trends, issues, and major milestones in the near future. As HPC is a broad subject, it is important to address the breadth of the industry. For this talk, this will be done by focusing on the two ends of the spectrum. The particular focus points will be the “commodity” HPC environment on the one hand and the road to PetaScale computing on the other. Intel's product and technology directions will be mapped onto these areas. The talk will conclude with a glimpse into what the future may hold for HPC technology. www.intel.com/go/hpc

(Bio) Dr. Stephen Wheat is a Principal Scientist in Intel's HPC (High Performance Computing) Program Office. Dr. Wheat interacts with the HPC end user community to educate them on Intel architecture and participate with users in architecting complex computing solutions using standard Intel building blocks. Dr. Wheat also acts as an end user advocate on behalf of the HPC end user community to provide feedback into Intel's multiple business units responsible for strategies and product decisions.

Dr. Wheat has a wide breadth of experience that gives him a unique perspective in understanding large scale HPC deployments. Dr. Wheat was the Advanced Development manager for the Storage Components Division, the manager of the RAID Products Development group, the manager of the Workstation Products Group software and validation groups, and manager of the systems software group within the Supercomputing Systems Division (SSD). At SSD, he was a Product Line Architect and was the systems software architect for the ASCI Red system. Before joining Intel in 1995, Dr. Wheat worked at Sandia National Laboratories, performing leading research in distributed systems software. While at Sandia, he created and led the SUNMOS and PUMA/Cougar programs. Dr. Wheat is a Gordon Bell prize winner and has been awarded Intel's prestigious Achievement Award. Dr. Wheat has a patent in Dynamic Load Balancing in HPC systems.

Dr. Wheat holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and has several publications on the subjects of load balancing, inter-process communication, and parallel I/O in large-scale HPC systems. Outside of Intel, Dr. Wheat is a commercial multi-engine pilot and a certified flight instructor.

Title of Presentation: Commodity Ethernet Clusters - Maximizing Your Performance

Prior to the spin-out of Precision I/O, Bob Felderman spent a year and a half as a key member of the technical staff at Packet Design, LLC, where he helped develop and implement the technology at the heart of Precision I/O's products.

Before joining Packet Design, he was a founder and Director of Software Development at Myricom, Inc., whose Myrinet architecture is the leading high-performance cluster-computing networking technology. Prior to Myricom, he was a researcher at USC's Information Sciences Institute, where he focused on high-speed local area networks and developed the ATOMIC LAN, the research prototype of Myrinet. He holds MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a BSE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University.

http://www.precisionio.com

Title of Presentation: "Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure"

My research focuses on the application of high performance and parallel computing to physics and materials problems. I have developed parallel algorithms for large scale micromagnetic modeling and molecular dynamics simulation.

As an outgrowth of these computational science research efforts, I have become committed to prototyping and building computational and educational infrastructure that will enable broad participation of scholars and students in high performance computing. I am a co-PI of the NSF CI-TEAM supported project “EPIC: Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure”.

I have also devoted effort to increasing the participation of minorities in computer and computational science and was recognized for this effort by the CRA with the A. Nico Habermann award. I am also Executive Director of the Institute for African-American eCulture (http://www.iaaec.com ).

I was also General Chair of the SC2002 High Performance Networking and Computing Conference (http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2002) and have spent efforts on policy issues in High Performance Computing, including serving on the DOE Office of Science‘s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee.

I am currently Chairman of the Boston University Faculty Council.

Education:
B.A. Honors,Physics University of Chicago, 1970
M.S., Physics Stanford University, 1973
Ph.D., Physics Stanford University, 1975
Postdoctoral Physics Stanford University, 1975-76; MIT Center for Theoretical Physics, 1976-1978

Title: NSF's Evolving Cyberinfrastructure Program

Abstract:
With origins in the NSF Supercomputer Center program and NSFnet program of the late 1980s, NSF is now enabling science and engineering users through its evolving Cyberinfrastructure program. Current resources supported by that program, including the TeraGrid, and representative science enabled through it will be described. Recent organizational and programmatic changes in NSF's Cyberinfrastructure program and the significance of performance and security will be discussed.

Biography:
Dr. Almes received his B.A. in Mathematics and Engineering, magna cum laude, and M.E.E. from Rice University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. A native of Texas, Dr. Almes and his family reside near White Plains, New York.

Guy Almes is a Program Officer in the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. There, he oversees a number of activities including the Extensible Terascale Facility.

While at NSF, Dr. Almes is a 'rotator', whose home institution is the Internet2 project, where he serves as Chief Engineer. Dr. Almes is a leader and a pioneer in the development of the Internet.

He was the founder and director of Sesquinet, an NSFnet regional network for Texas universities, colleges and corporations. He has served as Chairman of the Federation of American Research Networks (FARnet) and Chairman of the Interconnectivity Working Group and the IP Performance Metrics Working Group of the IETF.

Dr. Almes was a member of the computer science faculties at the University of Washington and Rice University. The author of many technical papers on operating systems, software and networking, his current research interests are in the design of advanced wide-area networks appropriate for supporting advanced university applications, network performance measurement and analysis, and application of advanced Internet functionality, such as quality of service and multicast protocols.

Personal bio: John Fragalla has been at Sun Microsystems, Inc. for the past seven years working in the High Performance and Technical Computing (HPTC) segment throughout his entire career. John has a B.S. in Computer Engineering and a M.S. in Electrical Engineering. Currently, John has Global responsibilities for all HPTC solutions into the Higher Education Market.

A meteorologist and career Air Force officer, Col. Joel D. Martin was named program director of Integrated Radar Data Services (IRaDS) at the University of Oklahoma in April 2004. In Jan 2005, he was named to leadership roles in the Center for Analysis and Predicition of Storms (CAPS) and the Sasaki Institute. Before coming to OU, he served as vice president for business operations and marketing at IPS MeteoStar in Aurora, Colo., from April 2003 to March 2004.

Prior to joining IPS MeteoStar, Martin served 26 years in the U.S. Air Force, most recently as chief of the Pacific Air and Space Weather Division at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. In that position, he was the senior uniformed Air Force weather officer responsible for the organization, training and equipage of more than 400 weather experts serving Air Force and Army operations in the Pacific. As a member of the operations team, he also served as director in the Pacific Air Operations Support Center and as an air expeditionary group commander.

From 1999 to 2000, Martin served as commander of the 26 th Operational Weather Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. He also has been assigned to the Pentagon as chief of weather resources for Air and Space Operations, where he served in a lead capacity in Air Force Weather re-engineering.

During his Air Force career, he developed an extensive management background in statistical process control and process improvement and, as an air officer aircrew member, logged more than 700 flying hours in WC-130 “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft, including incursions into four hurricanes and nine typhoons.

In 1991 he was presented the Francis W. Reichelderfer Award for distinguished public contributions by personnel of the weather services. The award, presented by the American Meteorological Society, recognized Martin for outstanding service by revolutionizing the analysis, forecasting and warning process at the U.S. Naval Oceanography Command/Joint Typhoon Warning Center on Nimitz Hill, Guam.

A native of Hobart, Okla., and a 1972 graduate of Shawnee (Okla.) High School, he earned his commission through the University of Oklahoma's ROTC program in 1977, where he also earned his bachelor of science degree in meteorology. He earned his master of science degree in tropical meteorology in 1988 from Colorado State University. Additionally, he is a graduate of the Air Force's Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College and Air War College, all at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, and completed the Air Combat Command Squadron Commander Course.

Martin has received numerous honors during his career in the military, including the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal with five oak leaf clusters, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster, and the Air Force Achievement Medal.

Abstract: Grid Computing enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of a wide variety of geographically distributed resources -- including supercomputers, storage systems, data sources, and specialized devices, all owned by diverse organizations. Although the concept of grid computing is very promising it has been a great challenge to apply it to real-world solutions for various reasons including evolving standards, though its been existent for a while the technology is still emerging, and the frequent new versions with little or no backward compatibility add to frustration when trying to interoperate. This talk gives an overview of two atmospheric projects which are successfully using Grid Computing, overcoming the above mentioned challenges.

Personal Bio: Suresh Marru, Department of Computer Science, Lindley Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47401 (smarru@cs.indiana.edu). Mr Suresh is a Scientific Computing Research Specialist working with Dr. Dennis Gannon on Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) and Teragrid Science Gateways projects. He is also a Affiliate Research Associate at the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS), University of Oklahoma. Earlier from 2001 to 2004 he worked as Research Assistant and Research Associate at CAPS. Suresh received B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Osmania University, India and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Oklahoma, Norman. His research interests include distributed and grid computing, portals, web services and developing user-friendly interfaces to atmospheric applications.

Abstract: Data center cooling challenges are discussed along with industry solutions to this complex problem

Personal Bio:Dell Computer 1993-Present
Graduate of Texas A&M University
Round Tock, Texas resident
Married with 3 daughters
Leads Dell's Enterprise Thermal Engineering Division including Data Center Thermal Logistics
37 patents

Personal Bio:Dr. Apon received a Ph.D. in 1994 from Vanderbilt University in the area of performance evaluation of parallel and distributed computing systems. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering at the University of Arkansas. Her research interests include cluster computing, parallel and distributed real-time system, and distributed file systems. Dr. Apon is the PI on a Major Research Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation that funded, in part, the purchase of Red Diamond, the first computer in Arkansas to be on the list of Top 500 fastest supercomputers. Apon is also currently the PI on research grants from Acxiom Corporation, Educause on behalf of NMI-EDIT, a co-PI on an ITR Grant from NSF, and is participating in the SURA Testbed Grid project.

Personal Bio:John Matrow has a B.S. in Computer Science from Central Missouri State University and a M.S. in Computer Science from Iowa State University. He has worked for the State of Iowa and spent 20 years at LSI Logic Storage Systems, formerly Symbios Logic, nee NCR Microelectronics Division, both in IT and product development. Since 2000, John has been System Administrator/Trainer and now Director at the High Performance Computing Center (HiPeCC) and has been actively involved in raising the level of research on campus with regard to high performance computing and high performance networking (Internet2). John also teaches night courses for the Computer Science and MIS departments.

Personal Bio:Mr. Jones has been with Foundry Networks for over six years in a variety of capacities. Prior to his current position, he led the world-wide System Engineering organization for Foundry Networks. That experience enabled him to meet with an international HPC user community that had deployed Ethernet technologies as the primary interconnect methodology. Many years before joining Foundry Networks, he helped build liquid nitrogen cooled supercomputers for a small company called ETA Systems. Mr. Jones holds a BS in Occupational Education from Southern Illinois University and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas.

Personal Bio:Dan Weber has worked as a Senior Research Scientist for the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms (CAPS), at The University of Oklahoma, in Norman, Oklahoma since 2001. Currently, he is spends his time doing ARPS Model Development, real time forecast and is the verification group leader. Responsible for the improvement of the ARPS including physics component development, optimization, parallel code optimization (MPI) in addition to testing and verifying the ARPS on a daily long-term basis. Current research interests include investigating the behavior and periodicity of moist deep convection using a high-resolution numerical model, microphysics, soil model development, and nested grid techniques. Project manager for a web based environmental workbench development project in cooperation with NCSA. Dan received his Ph.D. in Meteorology, from The University of Oklahoma in August 1997, he earned a M.S. in Meteorology, at the University of Utah in 1987 and earned a B.S. in Meteorology, in 1984, and a B.S. in Geology, both from the University of Utah, in 1983

Personal Bio:In March 1995, Dr. Box Leangsuksun started his career in AT&T network system and later becoming Lucent where he acquired practical experiences in telecomm system reliability and high availability research & development skills. He led the Lucent Technology R&D team in both technical and project management to improve system reliability in several cluster computing architecture products. One of his highlighted responsibilities was to improve the downtime of revenue generating network element provisioning products from 99.5% to 99.99%. In February 2002, he accepted an associated professor position at Louisiana Tech University where he has taught Computer Science and also played a significant R&D role in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Information Technology. Within a one year time span, Box has already started establishing his name and research recognitions by founding and co-chairing a high availability and performance workshop, releasing the first HA-Beowulf cluster software, writing articles featured in major technical journals/magazines, and giving presentations in highly-regarded conferences. He has also collaborated with various research groups and national and industrial labs, which include Oak Ridge National Lab, NCSA, LAM/MPI, Dell, Intel, and Ericsson etc. In September 2003, he received an outstanding teaching award from the college of Engineering and Science, Louisiana Tech University.

Personal Bio: Jim D. Mason, CEcD, EDFP

Jim Mason is the Vice President for Technology Initiatives with The State Chamber. He is a 24-year chamber management professional who serves as an advocate and lobbyist on technology issues for the State Chamber.

Previously he has served as CEO at the Stillwater, Chickasha and Cushing Chambers. Jim is a Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) and was instrumental in the creation of the Oklahoma Technology and Research Park in Stillwater.

A native of Colorado, Jim received his Masters degree from Oklahoma State University, following two bachelor degrees from Panhandle State University. He has served as President of the Governor's Economic Development Team, the Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce Executives, and the Oklahoma Economic Development Council.

In addition to working to grow the base of technology companies in Oklahoma, Jim is responsible for coordinating the statewide Oklahoma Technology Council. He has initiated TECH-NIGHT-OUT events that bring together Oklahoma technology companies and legislators from across the state to share information and develop proposed legislation to facilitate high tech growth in Oklahoma.

Jim also serves as the Director of the Oklahoma Nanotechnology Initiative under a grant from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). In 2004 he completed a planning grant on Bioinformatic Collaboration for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Jim is also a graduate of the Economic Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma and the Institute for Organizational Management at the University of Colorado. He has been honored as the “Economic Development Professional of the Year” and as the “Chamber Executive of the Year” by his peers.

Jim and his wife, Carolyn, have celebrated 35 years of marriage. They have two married daughters.

Abstract: Dr. Winkelman will speak on the relationship of American Indian culture and spirituality as it relates to science past and present. The presentation includes the role of the tribal colleges in science today; their impact on scientific methodology; and why the Indian perspective is important for research universities to understand.

Personal Bio:

Dr. Kim Winkelman – “Mato Blota Hunka” (Bear War Leader) - is the first (and recently appointed) President of Comanche Nation College. He is the former Vice President of Instruction and Academic Affairs – Oglala Lakota College, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. He is a tribal enrolled American Indian – Oglala Lakota and Abnaki. Kim is a retired U.S. Army officer (LTC), and the first American Indian to graduate and be commissioned from The Citadel. Besides holding various command and general staff positions, he was director of the US Bi-lateral Staff Talks – and served as a Military Diplomat and multi-cultural specialist for the Departments of Defense and State. Kim is also the first American Army officer to graduate from the Portuguese Institute of Higher Military Studies. He completed this 15 month Command & General Staff College/ War College curriculum entirely in the Portuguese Language. His decorations include: The Legion of Merit, The Portuguese Order of Military Merit (one of only two foreign officers to have ever been awarded this medal), The Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and 5 Army Meritorious service Medals. Kim served 14 of his 22 years of service overseas - from the Combat regions of Korea to the Middle East.

Since, his retirement from the military Dr. Kim (as he is known) has held both faculty and senior administrative positions for several colleges during the past 12 years.

He earned a baccalaureate degree from The Citadel; a Master's degree in International Policy Studies and Culture from The Monterey Institute of International Studies, of the University of California-Berkeley, and a Doctorate in Adult Education from Walden University.

Recently, Dr. Kim was the first recipient of a full scholarship and designated as “Tribal College Leadership Development Scholar” from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education to study at Harvard's Institute of Education Management. Dr. Kim serves on several regional and national advisory boards, including the National Museum of the Unites States Army, NASA's Western Region Alliance Council, and an executive consultant to SECME/SEMAA's Board of Directors (a national organization that promotes science and engineering careers for minority students).

A soldier – a diplomat – an educator.