A New Leadership Team for PRACE

At the 30th PRACE Council Meeting, held at Schiphol, Amsterdam on 18 June 2018, a regular change in the PRACE governance took place, with hand-over of two leadership roles to newly elected incumbents.

Prof Dr. Dr. Thomas Lippert, Director of the Institute for Advanced Simulation and Head of Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany, picked up the baton as Chair of the PRACE Council from Prof Dr Ir Anwar Osseyran of SURF/SURFsara in the Netherlands. Dr. Janne Ignatius, Adjunct Professor and Programme Director at CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd. in Finland, accepted the position of Vice-Chair following in the footsteps of Dr Sergi Girona of Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. The mandates of Thomas Lippert and Janne Ignatius will be effective for two years, until June 2020. Prior to this, Florian Berberich of Jülich Supercomputing Centre in Germany had already been appointed PRACE Council Secretary. The three appointments mark a complete change in leadership of the association. The PRACE Council is the highest decision-making body in PRACE. It oversees the Research Infrastructure and sets the policy for access to the resources.

PRACE is deeply grateful to Anwar and Sergi for their great commitment in shaping the second, very successful phase of the partnership,” Thomas Lippert said. “The challenge ahead is to provide true exascale computing capability for science and industry in Europe. As PRACE Council Chair, together with my colleagues and our scientific and industrial advisors, I am keen to bring the top-level HPC provision and support of PRACE together with the exascale systems of the coming EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.

Thomas Lippert.

Thomas Lippert was involved in the creation of PRACE long before its inauguration in 2010. He acted as advisor of Prof. Achim Bachem, founding Council Chair of PRACE, and he was actively driving the process that shaped the second phase of PRACE. He acted for a long time as coordinator of the PRACE Implementation Phase (IP) Projects (from PRACE-2IP to PRACE-5IP) and he is member of the PRACE Strategy Working Group (SWG). Since January 2018, Thomas Lippert is the German delegate on the PRACE Council.

PRACE is of utmost importance in advancing science in all areas where top-level HPC is the central instrument for research. I will work for the benefit of all PRACE member countries, and for HPC in Europe in the changing landscape.

Janne Ignatius.

Janne Ignatius has been the PRACE Council Delegate for Finland since 2013, and Member of the PRACE SWG since 2016. He also represents Finland on the Management Board of the PRACE-IP Projects, and chairs the Optional Programme Committee on Tier-1/DECI cycle exchange.

With Anwar and Sergi we completed the process of putting the PRACE 2 Programme in place, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them again for their tremendous efforts. Now we will start to work towards the third phase under the guidance of Thomas and Janne. I am looking forward to this task with their support.

Serge Bogaerts, PRACE Managing Director.