Week 1 | Big Data
Roger Downing
Roger is the Big Data Technical Lead for the STFC Hartree Centre. He joined STFC in 2004 as a sysadmin, but quickly moved into a developer role. During this time he has specialised in the provision of data archival services based on middleware such as SRB and iRODS. Since 2008, he has worked on a data management solution for DLS, and the same software has been redeployed for maintenance of CEDA data holdings. Roger was seconded to the Hartree Centre in 2014 to assist with a project utilising their IBM Big Insights capabilities. In his current role, he has managed and participated in several key big data projects for various industry partners and clients.
Week 2 | Engineering Simulation
Dr Lee Margetts
Lee Margetts has been working in the HPC sector since 1998. His Ph.D. thesis at the University of Manchester was on “Parallel Finite Element Analysis (FEA).” Lee worked as a Senior HPC Consultant in the UK National HPC Service CSAR from 2002 until 2008. He continued in a similar role at the University of Manchester until 2015, after which he became a Lecturer in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering. His research focuses on the use of HPC for computational solid mechanics applications. He is Director of the open source parallel finite element analysis project ParaFEM (link opens in a new window) and author of the accompanying text book “Programming the Finite Element Method”. Lee is active at the academic-industry interface as Chairman of the NAFEMS HPC Working Group and Vice-Chairman of the PRACE Industrial Advisory Committee.
Week 3 | Visualisation
Dr Hamish Carr
Hamish Carr (link opens in a new window) is an internationally recognised expert in scientific visualisation, in particular the mathematical foundations of visualisation and the use of topological analysis for interpretation of simulation data, but has also worked on geometric interpretation of LiDAR and on applications including nuclear scission, radiology, civil engineering and textile fibre orientation. He has co-authored around 80 publications, and has been awarded over £1M in research grants from EPSRC and Science Foundation Ireland. He has served as papers co-chair for IEEE/Eurographics (2014 & 2015), and serves on the international program committees of IEEE Visualisation and IEEE Pacific Visualisation. He is a member of ACM, IEEE and Eurographics, and the current chair of UK chapter of Eurographics.
Dr David Pugmire
David Pugmire (link opens in a new window) is an internationally recognized expert in large-scale scientific visualization. His research has focused on the scalability of visualization methods on super computers, parallel particle advection, and next-generation visualization frameworks for exascale super computers. He has broad experience with production visualization across a diverse set of scientific areas, including: astrophysics, neutron transport, seismology, fusion, and computational fluid dynamics. He has co-authored around 50 publications, and has been a Co-PI and senior personnel on numerous projects funded by the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health in the United States. He is currently a Senior Scientist in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. He also holds a Joint Faculty Professor appointment in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee.
Week 4 | High Performance Computing (HPC)
Dr Kirk E. Jordan
Kirk E. Jordan is an IBM Distinguished Engineer in the Data Centric Systems organization, an IBM Technical Executive position in IBM’s Research Division responsible for high performance computing (HPC) direction and strategy. He has been with IBM for more than 20 years. He oversees development of applications for IBM’s advanced computing architectures, investigates and develops concepts for new areas of growth involving high performance computing, and provides leadership in high-end data centric cognitive computing and simulation in such areas as geoscience, computational fluid dynamics, systems biology and high-end visualization. A Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Delaware, he is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science.
Jack Dongarra
Jack Dongarra holds an appointment at the University of Tennessee, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Manchester. He specializes in numerical algorithms in linear algebra, parallel computing, use of advanced-computer architectures, programming methodology, and tools for parallel computers. He was awarded the IEEE Sid Fernbach Award in 2004; in 2008 he was the recipient of the first IEEE Medal of Excellence in Scalable Computing; in 2010 he was the first recipient of the SIAM Special Interest Group on Supercomputing's award for Career Achievement; in 2011 he was the recipient of the IEEE IPDPS Charles Babbage Award; and in 2013 he received the ACM/IEEE Ken Kennedy Award. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, IEEE, and SIAM and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
