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Horst Simon Named ALD for Computing Sciences

February 23, 2004

Horst D. Simon, an internationally recognized expert in high performance computing, has been named associate laboratory director for Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab. 

“I’m extremely pleased to have Horst assume this responsibility,” Berkeley Lab Director Charles Shank said in announcing the appointment. “This is a critical time for the Laboratory’s computing sciences programs, and I greatly value Dr. Simon’s leadership. I look forward to working closely with him in these important assignments.” 

Simon joined LBNL in early 1996 as director of the newly formed National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Division and was one of the key architects in establishing NERSC at its new location in Berkeley. The NERSC Center, established in 1974, is DOE’s flagship facility for unclassified supercomputing. Simon is also the founding director of Berkeley Lab's Computational Research Division, which conducts applied research and development in computer science, computational science, and applied mathematics. 

As the associate laboratory director for Computing Sciences, Simon will have overall responsibility for three LBNL divisions – the NERSC Center, Computational Research, and Information Technologies and Services. He will continue to serve as division director for both the NERSC Division and for the Computational Research Division.

 At the Feb. 23 all-hands meeting where the appointment was announced, Simon thanked Director Shank for his “vision and leadership” in working to expand the contributions of computational science to LBNL research projects. Simon also thanked for Associate Lab Director Bill McCurdy for his mentorship in the ways of DOE and the national labs.

Noting that his already-crunched schedule was likely to become even more crowded, Simon encouraged employees to seek him out whenever they had ideas or issues to discuss. “I really look at this position as being one where you don’t work for me, but one in which I work for you,” he said.

In making the announcement, LBNL Director Shank noted that Simon “is widely respected for his contributions to science.” Simon earned his Ph. D. in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and continues his research in the  development and application of high performance linear algebra algorithms. His recursive spectral bisection algorithm is regarded as a breakthrough in parallel algorithms for unstructured computations, and his algorithm research efforts were honored with the 1988 Gordon Bell Prize for parallel processing research.

Simon is also widely known for his work in assessing the performance of supercomputers. He was member of the NASA team that developed the NAS Parallel Benchmarks, a widely used standard for evaluating the performance of massively parallel systems. He is also one of four editors of the twice-yearly “TOP500” list of the world’s most powerful computing systems.

From 1994 to 1996, Simon was with the Advanced Systems Division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. From 1989 to 1994, he worked for Computer Sciences Corporation as manager of a research department supporting the NAS (Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation) Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. Before that Simon was the manager of the Computational Mathematics Group of Boeing Computer Services, where he worked from 1983-89.

 


About Computing Sciences at Berkeley Lab

High performance computing plays a critical role in scientific discovery. Researchers increasingly rely on advances in computer science, mathematics, computational science, data science, and large-scale computing and networking to increase our understanding of ourselves, our planet, and our universe. Berkeley Lab’s Computing Sciences Area researches, develops, and deploys new foundations, tools, and technologies to meet these needs and to advance research across a broad range of scientific disciplines.