Stevens Named Argonne Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Life Sciences; new divisions created

ARGONNE, Ill. (April 11, 2006) – Rick Stevens has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Life Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory.

The newly created directorate brings together two Argonne research divisions – the Biosciences Division and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division– along with two new divisions – the Computation Institute and the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology. This new organizational structure will improve Argonne's ability to respond to current and emerging initiatives, national needs and opportunities in computational science and engineering, computer science, applied mathematics and structural and systems biology.

The change divides the Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences Directorate; and Al Sattelberger, the Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Biological and Computing Sciences, now becomes Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences. These changes are effective immediately.

“We look forward to Rick's leadership in this role – his strategic vision and his understanding of DOE's dynamics is a real strength,” said Argonne Director Robert Rosner.

Stevens has been at Argonne since 1982, and has served as director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division and also as Acting Associate Laboratory Director for Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences. He is currently leader of Argonne's Petascale Computing Initiative, Professor of Computer Science and Senior Fellow of the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago, and Professor at the University's Physical Sciences Collegiate Division. From 2000-2004, Stevens served as Director of the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid Project and from 1997-2001 as Chief Architect for the National Computational Science Alliance.

Ian Foster has been appointed Director of the Computation Institute. The Computation Institute was created by the University of Chicago and Argonne in 1999 in recognition of the increasingly central role that computation plays in many disciplines of the sciences, medicine, and the humanities. The institute has been housed at the University of Chicago, and now will also be based at Argonne.

Foster joined Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division in 1989, and has most recently served as MCS Associate Division Director and Senior Scientist. He is also the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Foster's research interests are in distributed and parallel computing, and computational science. He has published six books and over 300 articles and technical reports in these areas. The Distributed Systems Lab that he heads at Argonne and Chicago pursues research in these areas and also development of the Globus Toolkit, open source Grid software widely used in business and science.

Kevin P. White has been appointed Director of the new Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology. The Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology is a joint initiative between the University of Chicago and Argonne to further expand resources and capabilities in the emerging areas of integrative biological research. The Institute for Genomics and Structural Biology will focus the Laboratory's programs in genomics and structural biology and position the Laboratory to expand and to take on a role of national leadership in these rapidly growing fields.

White joins Argonne and The University of Chicago from Yale University, where since 2004, he served as Director of Applied Genomics at the Yale Center for RNAi and Therapeutic Chemical Genetics, Associate Professor of Genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine, and Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Ewing "Rusty" Lusk has been appointed Acting Director of Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division. Lusk joined Argonne in 1980, and is a Senior Computer Scientist in MCS, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Chicago. He was the winner of the 2000 University of Chicago Distinguished Performance Medal. His areas of specialization are parallel computing, program visualization, automated theorem proving, logic programming, database technology and systems software. He is the author of 100 articles in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation's first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America 's scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.

For more information, please contact Matthew Howard (630-252-7930 or mhoward@anl.gov) at Argonne.