William Kramer joins Blue Waters team at NCSA

released 11.13.08

William Kramer, formerly general manager of the Department of Energy's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), has joined the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) as a deputy project director for the sustained-petascale Blue Waters project. Kramer will join NCSA deputy director Rob Pennington in managing the project.

"Bill has a wealth of experience in the management of major computing projects, which will be a tremendous asset as we tackle the complexities of the Blue Waters project," said NCSA Director Thom Dunning. "Bill and Rob have the expertise and experience needed to ensure that the extraordinary capabilities of Blue Waters are fully realized."

The National Science Foundation-supported Blue Waters project is building the world's first sustained petaflop computational system dedicated to open scientific research. The project—a joint effort of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NCSA, IBM, and the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation—includes intense support for the development of petascale science and engineering applications, enhancement of the system software provided by IBM, interactions with business and industry, and educational programs, including a unique Virtual School of Computational Science and Engineering. This comprehensive approach will ensure that users across the country will be able to use Blue Waters to its fullest potential.

"In my career, I have always gravitated to the places that are trying to change the paradigms of computing and take on the most meaningful challenges. That is why I am so excited to be joining NCSA and the Blue Waters team," Kramer said. "The true value of any computer is how well it accelerates the entire range of scientific and human understanding. The Blue Waters project will have an unprecedented impact on all areas of science."

At NERSC and earlier, Kramer led the acquisition, testing, and introduction of more than 20 high-performance computing and storage systems. He was instrumental in managing the paradigm shift from vector computing to massively parallel systems and was one of the primary contributors to LBNL's Science Driven Computer Architecture initiative. He introduced project planning and metrics, negotiated multi-million dollar contracts, and led the effort to re-engineer LBNL's computer support system. He was named one of HPCWire's "People to Watch" in 2005 and chaired SC05. At NASA Ames, he put the world's first UNIX supercomputer into production.

For more information on the Blue Waters project, see www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/BlueWaters/.

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