Messina to depart from CACR

Paul Messina, Caltech faculty associate in scientific computing, will be leaving his positions as director of the Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR) and assistant vice president for scientific computing as of March 1.

“Paul has been at Caltech for almost 15 years, and has been the director of CACR since its founding more than six years ago,” Provost Steve Koonin said in his announcement. “His efforts have kept Caltech at the forefront of high performance computing.”

In addition to establishing CACR, Koonin noted, Messina’s accomplishments have included the redesign and renovation of Powell-Booth Laboratory for Computational Science, now a premier campus facility for collaborative research in computational science; and serving as chief architect in the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, a collaboration with UC San Diego and other universities.

He has also been involved with development and installation of the Intel Touchstone Delta, which at its inception in 1990 was the most powerful supercomputer in the world, and design of the CASA gigabit network, a high-speed, wide-area network that became a prototype for later computing infrastructure. “Paul has also served ably on numerous national committees advising such government agencies as NSF, NASA, and DOE on issues of high-performance computing and networking,” Koonin said.

Messina will continue part-time, for the near term, to facilitate Caltech’s role in the TeraGrid, a collaborative project to create the world’s largest and most powerful computer infrastructure for scientific research. He also plans to serve part-time as a senior advisor at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and at Argonne National Laboratory.

Koonin also announced that Daniel Meiron, associate provost for information and information technology, will serve as acting director for CACR until the position is filled.

“Caltech remains committed to the continued support and development of the Institute’s capabilities in high-performance computing and computational science,” Koonin said. “To that end, it is anticipated that one of the faculty searches now under way and associated with the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Initiative will identify the next director of CACR.”
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