CUG 2018 – Candidate Statements

Candidate for President

Colin McMurtrie

Colin McMurtrie is Associate Director and Head of HPC Operations at CSCS, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Colin has been involved with CUG on and off for more than 8 years and was System Support SIG chair for 2 years (2012 to 2014). His(My) plan is to continue the excellent work done by the current President, promote a healthy discourse within the CUG community and try to make the conference even more relevant for the growing Cray user community.

Candidates for Director-at-Large

“Evil” Jim Williams

My name is Jim Williams from Los Alamos National Laboratory. I have enjoyed serving as Director at Large for the last year and would like to continue in that capacity for an additional term. I’d appreciate your support in the coming election. Thank you very much.

Ben Lenard

I have a diverse background that extends from industry, to academia, to now Argonne. I originally received a BS from DePaul University in Computer Science. From there, I worked JP Morgan Chase for 8 years in several different roles. I was an application developer, an application database administrator, as well as a build and deploy and infrastructure engineer over my first term at the bank. From there I went to work for Northern Illinois University where I managed their PeopleSoft databases as well as the virtualization environment that supported the ERPs. At the same time, I completed my MS in Management Information Systems. I subsequently returned to JP Morgan Chase after working for the university for two years. While I was at the bank for the second time, I was the application database administrator for their non-production environments for a commercial credit card platform. While at the bank, I completed my MBA from Northern Illinois University. Since joining Argonne over three years ago, I am responsible for overseeing the administration and improvement of database systems in the ALCF’s supercomputing environment. These databases are critical to many of the facility’s support services, including job scheduling, job accounting, and business intelligence. I am very active the DB2 community and have spoken at IBM conferences as well as International DB2 User Group conferences. In addition to my day-to-day responsibilities, I have been a strong advocate for the ALCF and for computer science, volunteering for events like the Hour of Code and Argonne’s public open house. I am also currently pursuing a PhD in Computer and Information Sciences at DePaul University.

While I am new to CUG, I hope to bring insight to the board as I have a diverse background over my 18-year career. I am active in other communities and I hope to active in this one as well. Thank you for your time.