NCSA honors staff recognition award winners

Congratulations to the NCSA staffers who were honored on Feb. 24 for their outstanding contributions to the center.

Three Civil Service employees were recognized for their combined 65 years of outstanding effort on NCSA’s behalf:

• Amber Moore, 15 years
• Vicki Halberstadt, 20 years
• Beth McKown, 30 years

Several awards were given to individuals and teams who were nominated by their colleagues for outstanding contributions during the 2009-2010 academic year:

• Doug Fein, Administrative Excellence Award: As leader of NCSA’s Information Technology Services team, Doug continually learns new ways to apply advanced IT solutions. His two primary goals are driving down IT costs and improving customer service to NCSA staff. According to nominator John Melchi, “[Doug] really adds tremendous value to the center because he is eager to apply what he has learned to challenges facing NCSA. His efforts directly impact our bottom line and our management, at all levels, is better able to use data to make well informed, good decisions because of Doug’s efforts.”
• Automated Learning Group, Best Technical Achievement: Bernie A’cs, Loretta Auvil, Boris Capitanu, Michael Haberman, and David Tcheng developed the tools SEASR and Meandre, which scholars can adapt for data-driven knowledge discovery. Nominators Michael Welge and Bob Wilhelmson wrote that “Success … could not have been achieved without the team’s dedication, collaboration and drive, which allowed them to achieve something special, innovative and sustainable.”
• Private Sector Program team, Best Collaborative Effort: According to nominator Merle Giles, Evan Burness, Seid Koric, Luke Scharf, and Ahmed Taha have achieved new levels of technical customer service with partners Rolls-Royce, Caterpillar and John Zink. Each company has sought technical service and consulting that is pushing the boundaries. Their client service has been applauded as “without peers among public or private HPC providers.”
• Cristina Beldica and Brett Bode, Best Team Player Award: As the senior project manager for Blue Waters, Cristina oversees all aspects of the project. The team relies on her for guidance and oversight for both day-to-day efforts and long-term planning. Cristina’s nominator said that “her experience in project management, her dedication to the Blue Waters project, and her ability to provide leadership in all areas of the project have been instrumental in the project.”
  As a Technical Program Manager for Blue Waters, Brett works with many diverse members of the team on a regular basis. He is involved with projects than involve not just different staff at NCSA, but also staff from different parts of IBM, as well as collaborators from Computer Science, Electrical and Computing Engineering, INRIA in France. In nominating Brett, Mike Showerman and Bill Kramer said that he “is willing and able to step up and take a leadership role in multiple areas upon short notice. He is easy to get along with and communicates well with many very different types of people. … It would be rare to find a significant plan or document generated for [Blue Waters] hardware, software, applications or management that he hasn’t provided valuable input to help improve.”

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