Meet President Seidel

 

Personal Information

• Age 67. Born in 1957.
• Partner is Gabrielle Allen, Director of the UW School of Computing. Dr. Allen, also a physicist and computer scientist, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society, was most recently Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education, Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Curriculum and Instruction, and Research Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Seidel grew up in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Connecticut; Dr. Allen hails from Barking, England.

Positions Held (2014-Present)

• University of Illinois System, Vice President for Research, and Vice President for Economic Development and Innovation, 2016-2020.
• Leader of the Illinois Innovation Network, a consortium of 15 universities including all four-year public universities in Illinois, 2016-2020.
• Founding Interim Director of the Discovery Partners Institute, an interdisciplinary campus of the University of Illinois System and other partners worldwide, 2017-2019.
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Founder Professor, Department of Physics; Professor, Departments of Astronomy and Computer Science, Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment, 2014-2020.
• Director, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), UIUC, 2014-2017.

Positions Held (2008-2014)

• Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation and Professor, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia, 2012-14.
• National Science Foundation, Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, 2009-2012; Director of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure, 2008-2010.

Positions Held (2003-2008)

• Founding Director, Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, 2003-2008.
• Floating Point Systems Professor, Louisiana State University Departments of Physics and Computer Science, 2003-2010; continuing as Professor while at NSF, 2010-2012.
• Chief Scientist, Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, 2004-2008.

Positions Held (1996-2005)

• Professor and Head of Numerical Relativity and eScience Research Groups, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Albert Einstein Institute, Potsdam, Germany, 1996-2005.

Positions Held (1991-1996)

• Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of Illinois, 1996.
• Senior Research Scientist, Head of Numerical Relativity Group, National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Visiting Associate Professor of Physics, University of Illinois, 1991-1996.

Education

• Ph.D. in Relativistic Astrophysics, Yale University, 1988.
• M.Phil. (1988), M.S. (1987), Yale University.
• M.S. in Physics, University of Pennsylvania, 1983.
• B.S. in Mathematics and Physics, College of William and Mary, 1981.

Professional Memberships

• American Physical Society (APS), Lifetime Fellow.
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Lifetime Fellow.
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

Current Board and Executive/Leadership Memberships

• Department of Energy Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (ASCAC), 2022-present.
• Helmholtz Association President’s Scientific Advisory Board, 2019-present.
• Council on Competitiveness, Commissioner, 2020-present.
• Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, President’s Council, 2020-present.
• Mountain West Conference Board of Directors, 2020-present.

Selected Recent Board/Executive Leadership Positions

• Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences Board of Visitors, University of Texas-Austin, 2014-2022.
• Illinois Chamber of Commerce Board, 2016-2020.
• Argonne National Laboratory Board of Governors, 2016-2020.
• Illinois Ventures Board of Managers, University of Illinois venture capital fund, 2016-2020.
• University of Illinois Research Park Board of Managers, 2016-2020.
• CURRENT: Chicago’s Water Economy Board Member, 2017-2020.
• Association of Public and Land Grant Universities, Council on Research, Executive Committee, 2017-2020.
• Council on Competitiveness, Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative, 2017-2020.
• German Excellence Initiative Review for selecting top Germany Universities for excellence funding, 2018.
• Science Foundation Ireland, Review Team, 2019.
• Helmholtz Foundation, Chair of Review Committee for Jülich Research Center, 2014-2018.

Selected Honors and Special Awards

• American-Israel Chamber of Commerce Business Leadership Award, Chicago, 2018.
• Citation for one of the Best 20 Papers of the Last 20 Years by the International ACM Symposium on High Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing, 2012.
• IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award, 2006.
• Governor of Louisiana Technology Award, Rising Star of the Year, 2004.
• HPC Wire “Top Ten to Watch,” 2003.
• Gordon Bell Prize, for paper titled: “Supporting Efficient Execution in Heterogeneous Distributed Computing Environments with Cactus and Globus.”
• Heinz Billing Preis (Max Planck Society award for work in computational science), 1998.

Recent National Reports, DOE, US National Academy of Science

• Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, Facilities Subcommittee Report. Chaired report recommending advanced computing facility pathways for the next decade, 2024.
• National Academy of Science, Open Science By Design: Realizing a Vision for 21st Century Research, member of the committee that wrote this report, 2018.

 

PRESIDENT SEIDEL'S SOCIAL CHANNELS