Rich Knepper, Steering Committee Chair
Rich is the Director of the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing, leading the planning and operations of the center, with a focus on meeting the evolving needs of Cornell researchers and the broader scientific community. Rich joined CAC in 2017 as Deputy Director, coming from Indiana University, where he previously led the Campus Bridging and Research Infrastructure team. Rich earned his PhD in Informatics at the Indiana Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. Rich’s research interests include the establishment and governance of cyberinfrastructure organizations, high performance and cloud computing, application containerization, and ethnography of virtual organizations.
John Towns
John Towns is the Deputy Director at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA, http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu). He leads the NSF-funded ACCESS Coordination Office, as part of the overall ACCESS Program (https://access-ci.org/) supporting researchers and educators nation-wide in the use of advanced computing systems, and plays key roles in the National AI Research Resource (NAIRR) Pilot (https://nairrpilot.org/) as co-Chair of the Allocations Working Group and Chair of the Coordination Team. He also serves as executive sponsor of NCSA’s Quantum Program Office, a partnership with the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST), to advance quantum research. With over 35 years of experience, Towns has held leadership roles in numerous national and international initiatives supporting advanced research computing. He holds M.S. degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Illinois and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Missouri-Rolla.
Andrew Sherman
Dr. Andrew Sherman is a Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Computer Science and at the Yale Center for Research Computing. His background is in numerical linear algebra, scientific computation and high-performance parallel computing, and he has extensive experience developing algorithms and software for the physical sciences and engineering in both academic and commercial environments. In addition to his research computing role, Dr. Sherman is a Lecturer in Computer Science and teaches a class on parallel programming techniques. He holds one of Yale’s first PhD’s in Computer Science, taught at several major universities, and led several startups that developed high performance computing tools and software. Currently, Dr. Sherman is the Principal Investigator of a grant funded by the National Science Foundation to expand and broaden the pipeline of professionals who can help researchers (especially at small-to-medium-sized schools or from underrepresented groups) make effective use of advanced computing.
Henry Neeman
Dr. Henry Neeman is the Director of the OU Supercomputing Center for Education & Research, Executive Director of Research Computing, Associate Professor in the Gallogly College of Engineering and Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Oklahoma (OU). He serves as founder and co-lead of the Virtual Residency program for training Research Computing Facilitators, Principal Investigator of the NSF-funded Certified Cyberinfrastructure Facilitator Training & Development (CCIFTD) program, and the founder and co-lead of the Cyberinfrastructure Leadership Academy. He previously served as the joint co-lead of the XSEDE Campus Engagement program, which included the Campus Champions. He received his BS in computer science and his BA in statistics with a minor in mathematics in 1987 from the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, his MS in CS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990 and his PhD in CS from UIUC in 1996. Before coming to OU, Dr. Neeman was a postdoctoral research associate at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at UIUC, and before that served as a graduate research assistant both at NCSA and at the Center for Supercomputing Research & Development.
Erik Scott
Erik Scott is Director of HPC and AI Supercomputing GPU Business Development at AMD, where he leads global ecosystem engagement and customer enablement for AMD Instinct™ GPUs. With over 23 years of experience, Erik has advanced HPC solutions across the energy, government, semiconductor, and cloud sectors. He brings deep expertise in workload optimization, system architecture, and strategic planning, having led transformative initiatives across leading Oil & Gas E&P companies, technology firms, defense organizations, and cloud service providers. As a member of the Linux Clusters Institute Steering Committee, Erik is committed to advancing the global HPC community through open knowledge sharing, hands-on training, and scalable cluster innovation.
J.D. Maloney
J.D. Maloney works at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications as a Lead HPC Storage Engineer. In addition to managing NCSA’s Storage Enabling Technologies group, he helps support many different HPC-based research endeavors by solving challenges related to HPC file system architecture/design, storage hardware configuration, file system performance tuning/optimization, file system troubleshooting, and at-scale data management/workflow automation. He also leads NCSA’s Innovative Systems Lab (ISL) which explores upcoming compute, network, and storage technologies; working to determine which new technologies are suitable for large-scale deployment for the national research community. J.D. earned a M.S. in Management Information Systems (MIS) and a B.S. in Technical Systems Management (TSM), both from the University of Illinois.
Jason Mierek
Jason is a PMP-certified Project Manager at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his project management portfolio includes the Linux Clusters Institute. He brings over 20 years professional experience in higher education and a decade in project management. His career in project management began with spinning up The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium and coordinating its portfolio of projects. He holds an M.A. degree in Buddhist Studies from The Naropa Institute and a B.A. in Religion and Bio-Cultural Studies from Illinois Wesleyan University.