Carl Kesselman
Computational Grid pioneer Carl Kesselman has been named an ISI Fellow, and is the fourth to receive the distinction instituted in 1999 to honor a limited number of USC Information Sciences Institute personnel who have achieved a high level of external distinction through notable contributions to science and/or technology.
ISI Executive Director Herbert Schorr made the announcement September 23.”Carl has had a significant impact on a global scale as a pioneer and leader in the development of the Grid,” said Schorr in a prepared statement. “Carl has been instrumental in formulating the Grid vision, of resource sharing (for distributed computation, data, services, etc.) and coordinated problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations; in posing and solving key problems with respect to the Grid, such as adaptive management of wide-area computing anda communication resources and the scheduling and coordination of heterogeneous resources; and in designing and developing the Globus toolkit, the de facto standard for the Grid.
“The Grid is one of the most important initiatives in Computer Science at this time, with endorsement by all the major computer and software manufacturers, and particularly strong support from IBM, HP, and Oracle,” Schorr’s statement continued. “It is also a major component of the future of ISI, both in and of itself, and through the interdisciplinary and interdivisional collaborations that coalesce around it.”
Dr. Kesselman, who serves as director of the Center for Grid Technologies at ISI, is a research associate professor in the USC School of Engineering department of computer science. He also serves as co-chair of the faculty advisory committee for the USC High Performance Computing and Communications center.
Kesselman is also the Chief Architect of NSF’s National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) and the Architecture Team Lead for NSF’s George E. Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES). He works as well with the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN) project developing new techniques for managing and analyzing extremely large data sets.
He has recently received numerous honors for his grid work. In 2003, Kesselman was a finalist in the World Technology Award for Information Technology Software and was named as one the year’s “Top 10 Innovators” by InfoWorld. In the same year, the Globus project that he collaborates on with Dr. Ian Foster and Dr. Steve Tuecke won the Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer.
In 2002, Kesselman’s Grid Computing work was named one of “Ten Technologies that Will Change the World” by M.I.T. Technology Review, and received a “Top 100” award as well as a “Most Promising New Technology” honor from the R&D Magazine. In the same year, the British Computing Society awarded Kesselman and Foster their Ada Lovelace medal.
“Now we add our own recognition, the title of ISI Fellow, to this impressive list,” said Schorr, making the announcement.
Kesselman came to the USC Information Sciences Institute in 1996 from Caltech. He received a M.S. in computer science from USC in 1984, and his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1991.
His other interests include the clarinet and home brewing of fine lagers and ales.
The three previous recipients of the ISI Fellow title are researchers Eduard Hovy, Robert Braden, and Peter Will.
Published on September 25th, 2003
Last updated on August 9th, 2021
