Jack Dongarra to Receive 2013 Ken Kennedy Award
Denver, CO — ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, and IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, announced this week that the University of Tennessee’s Jack Dongarra will receive the prestigious ACM-IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for 2013.
Since 2009, ACM and the IEEE Computer Society have awarded prominent figures in the high performance computing (HPC) community with this award. Dongarra was selected to receive this honor for his work in developing mathematical software, standards, and parallel processing methods that revolutionized the practice of supercomputing worldwide. Dongarra will receive the award during SC13, the international conference for high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis, in Denver, CO on November 19.
Dongarra’s influence is felt in the many popular software packages on which he has worked and that include the results of his research. Those software packages include the popular LINPACK library, which has served as the benchmark measure for the 500 fastest computers in the world since 1993, as well as more recent software packages that are used to efficiently and effectively solve the complex equations underpinning many applications of interest in the HPC community. He has also developed parallel processing and programming methods that have been critical in increasing the performance of HPC systems.
ACM and IEEE chose Dongarra for this year’s Ken Kennedy Award because of his “influential contributions to mathematical software, performance measurement, and parallel programming, and significant leadership and service within the HPC community.”
“It is very difficult to overstate the contribution of Jack’s research and leadership in the field of supercomputing,” remarked Bill Gropp, the Thomas M. Siebel Chair in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, co-creator of MPI, and the general chair of SC13. “By focusing on software and methods that allow users and application developers to focus on science, rather than the arcane intricacies of processor and machine performance, Jack’s work has directly enabled much of the innovation that HPC has brought to our society.”
In addition to his role as a Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee, Dongarra is a Senior Research Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Turing Fellow at the University of Manchester, and an Adjunct Professor at Rice University. He is also the Director of the Innovative Computing Laboratory and the Center for Information Technology Research at the University of Tennessee.
“Jack is one of those rare and gifted individuals who has built diverse research collaborations around the world, while also shaping the landscape of HPC software and hardware,” commented Daniel Reed, Vice-President for Research and Economic Development and Computational Science and Bioinformatics Chair at the University of Iowa, and awards chair for SC13.
As well as being an elected an ACM Fellow in 2001, Dongarra is also an AAAS, IEEE, and SIAM Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In addition, he received the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award in 2004 for his innovations in HPC; the IEEE Medal of Excellence in Scalable Computing in 2008; the SIAM Special Interest Group on Supercomputing award for his career achievements in 2010; and the IEEE IPDPS Charles Babbage Award in 2011.
After receiving a bachelor’s in Mathematics from Chicago University in 1972, Dongarra pursued a master’s in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1973. Dongarra received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico in 1980.
Previous recipients of the Ken Kennedy Award are Mary Lou Soffa, Susan Graham, David Kuck, and Francine Berman. More information on the award can be found on the web at http://awards.acm.org/kennedy/.
About SC13
SC13, sponsored by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and the IEEE Computer Society, offers a complete technical education program and exhibition to showcase the many ways high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis lead to advances in scientific discovery, research, education and commerce. This premier international conference includes a globally attended technical program, workshops, tutorials, a world-class exhibit area, demonstrations and opportunities for hands-on learning. For more information on SC13, please visit: http://sc13.supercomputing.org