November 8, 2006
Dear NERSC & CRD Staff,
I would like to tell you about some important changes in the leadership of the NERSC Division. After recent discussions with Laboratory Director Chu and Deputy Director Graham Fleming, as well as with DOE Program Managers, I would like to inform you that lab management has agreed to my recommendation to recruit for a new NERSC Division Director. I will remain Associate Laboratory Director and Director of the Computational Research Division, and the lab expects to add a new NERSC Division Director to the computing sciences management team in early 2007. I have received strong support for this decision from both Laboratory and DOE management, and I would like to explain my rationale for it to you.
For the last three years I have held three positions: Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences, and Division Director for both NERSC and CRD. During these three years several major events happened: a successful strategic review of NERSC with a new five-year plan; a near doubling of the NERSC budget; two Lehman Reviews of ESnet that firmly re-established ESnet at Berkeley Lab and led to a completely new networking strategy for DOE; and lastly, a complete recompetition of the ScIDAC program, where Berkeley did very well, and maintained its role as the lead lab in many projects.
I think that with a successful completion of all these activities, the computational facilities and research program at LBNL is firmly grounded, well funded, and with clear directions for the next four to five years. Hence the timing is perfect for me to let someone else take over NERSC. The new NERSC Director will have the opportunity to start with a solid base and from there develop a new vision for the next decade.
Recent changes in Berkeley, such as the new Lab contract, and new leadership both at the Lab and on campus have led to a much stronger collaborative spirit between the Lab and campus. I would like to focus my efforts in this changed environment to build a strong computational science and engineering (CSE) activity that leverages the unique talents, skills and facilities of both campus and the Lab. Foremost, a near-term goal is the completion of the Computational Research and Theory (CRT) building. Of course, maintaining and growing our base research programs in mathematics and computer science as well as our SciDAC projects, will continue to require my attention. With a strong partner who will lead NERSC, I expect to be in a much better position to focus more attention on nurturing and promoting computational research in the future.
In the next few days, Director Chu will assemble a search committee for the new NERSC Division Director. The committee will conduct an international search for the next NERSC Division Director. I will keep you informed about the progress in the search process. Until a successor has been named, I will remain NERSC Division Director, and operations will continue as before in NERSC and CRD. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
Thank you for all of your support and contributions over the past years. Our many successes have positioned us well for the future and I look forward to continuing to work with all of you.
Horst
