On April 3, 2014, Farnam Jahanian, Assistant Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) Directorate, released the following letter to the community:
Dear Colleagues,
I am delighted to announce the appointment of Ms. Irene Qualters to the position of Division Director, Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI), effective April 6, 2014. In this role, Irene will lead ACI in its mission to support and coordinate the prototyping, development, acquisition, and provisioning of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools, and services essential to the advancement and transformation of science and engineering.
Over the past several years, Irene has provided significant leadership in managing NSF’s investments in several of its largest advanced computational resources, including Blue Waters at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Stampede at the University of Texas, Austin. She has also made key contributions to other NSF programs and has served as Acting Division Director since September 2013. As a recognized leader in advanced computinginfrastructure, she represents NSF in several interagency and internationalefforts that span software, data, and computation.
Prior to her NSF career, Irene had a distinguished 30-year career in industry, with a number of executive leadership positions in the technology sector. During her twenty years at Cray Research, she participated in the development of the first commercially successful autovectorizing compiler, the first multiprocessor version of UNIX, and Cray’s landmark massively parallel computer, the T3E. For six years as Vice President, she led Information Systems for Merck Research Labs, focusing on international cyberinfrastructure to advance all phases of pharmaceutical R&D. Irene is an expert in parallel computer system architectures and in a wide variety of software development arenas, from scientific applications to file systems and operating systems.
On behalf of the CISE Directorate, I would like to thank the external search committee members for their excellent work in identifying candidates for this important position. I would also like to thank everyone in ACI and key stakeholders across the foundation for their input during this search process.
I look forward to working with Irene in her role as Division Director of ACI. Together, we will ensure that advanced cyberinfrastructure continues to accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and engineering innovation across all areas of inquiry.
Best regards,
Farnam
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Farnam Jahanian
NSF Assistant Director for CISE
National Science Foundation
tel: (703) 292-8900
email: fjahania@nsf.gov
web: http://www.nsf.gov/cise/about.jsp
