NERSC Administrative Staff

Kathy Yelick is director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center. NERSC is the principal supplier of production high-performance computing tools and expertise to the nationwide energy research community. Kathy has been a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1991 and is an internationally recognized expert in developing methods to advance the use of supercomputers. She earned her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT and has held a joint research appointment at Berkeley Lab since 1996. Her research interests include parallel computing, memory hierarchy optimizations, programming languages, and compilers.

Howard Walter has over 25 years of experience in the management and support of high performace US Army, NASA and DOE computer systems and facilities. He joined NERSC to lead the development of the physical infrastructure for NERSC-3 and future systems, a process that culminated in the construction of a new computer facility in Oakland and the relocation of the NERSC machine room to the Oakland Scientific Facility in October 2000. Howard earned a B.S. in Physics from St. Lawrence University and an M.S. in Numerical Science from Johns Hopkins University.

Francesca Verdier has been managing user services at high performance computing facilities since 1990, including the consulting help desk, online information systems, training programs, and the installation and maintenance of third-party and locally written software. She has always emphasized the importance of obtaining user feedback, by online Web surveys, email surveys, and personal phone calls, to assess how well a center is performing and to provide input for areas that need improvement. Francesca is also responsible for managing NERSC's allocations process and is in charge of the NERSC Information Management system, which handles automated account management and usage reporting. She has a B.A. in Mathematics from McGill University.