Beckman Appointed ALCF Project Director, Bair to Lead CELS Strategic Planning

Pete Beckman has been appointed project director of the ALCF. He also will serve as acting division director for the Leadership Computing Facility. Pete will be responsible for bringing the 500-TF IBM BG/P through acceptance testing and into early science, bringing the 100-TF BG/P into INCITE production, upgrading the storage and I/O systems, and transitioning the ALCF organization into steady-state operations. He will also recruit additional staff and users to the ALCF and chart a path for the future.

Pete previously served as the ALCF's chief architect and has more than a decade of experience in large-scale computing and project management. He has worked in systems software for parallel computing, operating systems, and Grid computing for 20 years. He also worked in industry, serving as vice president of Turbolinux's worldwide engineering efforts, managing development offices in the United States, Japan, China, Korea, and Slovenia.

Ray Bair, who established the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) in 2006 and initially acted as its director, has joined Argonne's Computing, Environment and Life Science (CELS) directorate to lead the strategic planning effort at CELS. In his new position, Ray will assist with the development of the CELS components of Argonne's strategic plan and lab-wide computational science planning and program development. Ray's expertise in strategic planning of large-scale computing projects will prove invaluable for the laboratory.