Dr. Vipin Kumar kumar@cs.umn.edu (612) 624-8023 http://www.cs.umn.edu/~kumar

Dr. Vipin Kumar, professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has been named the new director of the Army High Performance Computing Research Center (AHPCRC). This appointment is an acknowledgement of Dr. Kumar's extensive and unparalleled work in the area of high performance computing, parallel algorithms for scientific computing problems, and data mining.

The center was established at the University of Minnesota in 1989 by the U.S. Army after a nation-wide competitive selection process. The University received a $65 million dollar grant to conduct research in high-performance computing. In 1995, the Center was renewed for another five years. AHPCRC is the only academic research center funded by the U.S. Army for high performance computing research. Although many computer science faculty have been involved since the inception of the Center, this is the first time the leadership of the center comes from the department of computer science and engineering.

Computer science researchers at the Center have focused on the development of algorithms for solving large-scale simulation problems using high performance computers, as well as for decision support for battlefield visualization. Metis, the software library for partitioning large unstructured graphs developed by Professors Karpis and Kumar at the Center, is used world-wide in a variety of domains including high-performance scientific simulation, VLSI circuit design, and data mining.

The center maintains and operates a 256-node, 128 giga byte Cray T3-1200 parallel supercomputer. This is one of the largest supercomputers available at any academic institution world-wide.

Dr. Kumar has authored over 100 research articles, and co-edited or co-authored 5 books, including the widely used text book, "Introduction to Parallel Computing" (Publ. Benjamin Cummings/Addison Wesley, 1994). Professor Kumar has given numerous invited talks at various conferences, workshops and national labs. He has served as chair/co-chair for many conferences/workshops in the area of parallel computing and high performance data mining.

Dr. Kumar serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Concurrency, Parallel Computing, the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, and has served on the editorial board of IEEE. He is a member of SIAM and ACM, and is a Fellow of the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute.

Dr. Kumar is also the associate head of the department of computer science and engineering.

For more information on Dr. Kumar and his research and publications, please visit his web page.