Accomplished computational scientist has joined University-Argonne institute

Daniel S. Katz has joined the Computation Institute as a senior computational researcher and high-performance computing/grid consultant. His appointment was effective Monday, April 27.

In announcing the appointment, Computation Institute Director Ian Foster lauded Katz as “a distinguished computational scientist, well-known nationally and internationally.”

A joint project between the University and Argonne National Laboratory, the Computation Institute addresses the most challenging computational and communications problems arising from a broad range of intellectual pursuits.

Katz comes to the operation from Louisiana State University, where he served for three years as director for cyber-infrastructure development at the Center for Computation & Technology, and as adjunct associate professor in electrical and computer engineering.

In Chicago, Katz will continue as Grid Infrastructure Group science director of the TeraGrid, the world’s largest open scientific discovery infrastructure—a system of interconnected computers that scientists and engineers use to solve some of their most challenging problems.

“Over my career, I’ve worked with people at Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, and always had the highest respect for both the individuals as well as the number of talented people assembled there,” Katz said.

“The work here on world-changing computer projects provides opportunities for me to contribute to the national and international parallel and distributed computing field in ways that I could not do anywhere else.”

Katz received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Northwestern University. Between 1993 and 2006, he held a variety of technical positions at Cray Research, Silicon Graphics and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

A senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, his work has appeared in numerous book chapters, journal and conference publications and NASA Tech Briefs.