George Cotter Award
On the 5th anniversary of CLSAC, we decided to establish an Award for Vision and Leadership in the Field of Data Analytics, with the following criteria:
- Prescience of the field of data analytics
- Shared a bold vision of the future before clear trends were established
- Concrete, citable proof of the above
The CLSAC award committee has decided to confer our inaugural Vision and Leadership Award to George Cotter and (with his permission), it will hereafter be known as the George Cotter Award. We can think of no better way to honor the impact that George continues to have on our community.
A brief overview of George’s Distinguished Career
George has a long list of previous awards and honors – will highlight two
George’s specific outstanding technical and professional engineering accomplishments and contributions:
George has been a long-time supporter of high performance computing and associated research in materials, semiconductors and telecommunications. This included research investments and system acquisitions that had a material effect on the high performance computing industry and computing and communications technology. Without this level of support, the industry and the technology would not have achieved some very significant breakthroughs in support of National Security initiatives in signals intelligence and signals analysis. Much of this technology has trickled down to today’s commodity microprocessors and telecommunications systems. George has been an advocate of supercomputers with large memory addressing capability that support all kinds of graph analytics. His vision lives on today; last year’s NSCI Executive Order includes an objective to increase the coherence between the technology base used for modeling and simulation and that used for data analytic computing. This was the rationale for founding CLSAC five years ago, and is why we are pleased that George has consented to allow us to name this award in his honor.
A brief overview of George’s Distinguished Career
- George started his professional service to our Nation as an analyst for the U.S Navy.
- He joined the National Security Agency in 1952 and for the next thirty years, held various analytic and operational management positions in the cryptologic field.
- Starting in 1982, George held many technical executive positions of increasing responsibility within the NSA, including Chief of Staff, Deputy Director for Telecommunications and Computer Services, Head of the Director’s Senior Council, Chief Scientist, Director of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer.
- Since 2009, George has been a retired NSA Senior Technology Executive
George has a long list of previous awards and honors – will highlight two
- 2007: National Academy of Engineering: Class of 2007 – For leadership in the research and development of high-end computing and communications for national security.
- 2010: The National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal is given in recognition of “sustained selfless service of the highest order and/or extraordinary and long lasting contributions to the Intelligence Community and the United States by an individual in a position of great responsibility.” George received this honor, For contributions in the area of high-end computing and advanced information technology architectures.
George’s specific outstanding technical and professional engineering accomplishments and contributions:
George has been a long-time supporter of high performance computing and associated research in materials, semiconductors and telecommunications. This included research investments and system acquisitions that had a material effect on the high performance computing industry and computing and communications technology. Without this level of support, the industry and the technology would not have achieved some very significant breakthroughs in support of National Security initiatives in signals intelligence and signals analysis. Much of this technology has trickled down to today’s commodity microprocessors and telecommunications systems. George has been an advocate of supercomputers with large memory addressing capability that support all kinds of graph analytics. His vision lives on today; last year’s NSCI Executive Order includes an objective to increase the coherence between the technology base used for modeling and simulation and that used for data analytic computing. This was the rationale for founding CLSAC five years ago, and is why we are pleased that George has consented to allow us to name this award in his honor.
2016 Recipient: George Cotter
George Cotter has been a long-time supporter of high performance computing and associated research in materials, semiconductors and telecommunications. This included research investments and system acquisitions that had a material effect on the high performance computing industry and computing and communications technology. Without this level of support, the industry and the technology would not have achieved some very significant breakthroughs in support of National Security initiatives in signals intelligence and signals analysis. Much of this technology has trickled down to today’s commodity microprocessors and telecommunications systems. George has been an advocate of supercomputers with large memory addressing capability that support all kinds of graph analytics. His vision lives on today; last year’s NSCI Executive Order includes an objective to increase the coherence between the technology base used for modeling and simulation and that used for data analytic computing. This was the rationale for founding CLSAC five years ago, and is why we are pleased that George has consented to allow us to name this award in his honor.
George Cotter has been a long-time supporter of high performance computing and associated research in materials, semiconductors and telecommunications. This included research investments and system acquisitions that had a material effect on the high performance computing industry and computing and communications technology. Without this level of support, the industry and the technology would not have achieved some very significant breakthroughs in support of National Security initiatives in signals intelligence and signals analysis. Much of this technology has trickled down to today’s commodity microprocessors and telecommunications systems. George has been an advocate of supercomputers with large memory addressing capability that support all kinds of graph analytics. His vision lives on today; last year’s NSCI Executive Order includes an objective to increase the coherence between the technology base used for modeling and simulation and that used for data analytic computing. This was the rationale for founding CLSAC five years ago, and is why we are pleased that George has consented to allow us to name this award in his honor.
2017 Recipient: Bruce Hendrickson
Associate Director for Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Bruce has long demonstrated a passion for large-scale analytics, evolving from work in Graph Algorithms and discrete mathematics at Sandia National Laboratories. He’s exemplified intellectual honesty in his scientific inquiry into the subject and been willing to move past long established models of computation to which he himself contributed in the area of traditional High Performance Computing. Bruce has done so while mentoring others at all levels of the field and encouraging the growth we see today.
Associate Director for Computation at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Bruce has long demonstrated a passion for large-scale analytics, evolving from work in Graph Algorithms and discrete mathematics at Sandia National Laboratories. He’s exemplified intellectual honesty in his scientific inquiry into the subject and been willing to move past long established models of computation to which he himself contributed in the area of traditional High Performance Computing. Bruce has done so while mentoring others at all levels of the field and encouraging the growth we see today.
2018 Recipient: Burton Smith
The CLSAC award committee decided to confer our award for Vision and Leadership in the Field of Data Analytics to Burton Smith. Quite frankly, our CLSAC community was shocked to learn of the passing of Burton on April 2 earlier this year. We lost a giant who has left an enduring legacy on our community.
A brief overview of Burton’s formative education:
Burton spent his freshman year studying physics at Pomona College, before transferring to The University of New Mexico, but was still unhappy with his education so he dropped out to, like George Cotter, join the US Navy, where he provided four years of military service in the early 1960’s. Burton returned to UNM and shifted his major from Physics to EE, graduating summa cum laude with a BSEE in 1967. Burton went on to MIT where he received his Sc.D. in 1972
Burton’s Professional Service to Data Analytics:
Highlights of Burton’s previous awards and honors:
The CLSAC award committee decided to confer our award for Vision and Leadership in the Field of Data Analytics to Burton Smith. Quite frankly, our CLSAC community was shocked to learn of the passing of Burton on April 2 earlier this year. We lost a giant who has left an enduring legacy on our community.
A brief overview of Burton’s formative education:
Burton spent his freshman year studying physics at Pomona College, before transferring to The University of New Mexico, but was still unhappy with his education so he dropped out to, like George Cotter, join the US Navy, where he provided four years of military service in the early 1960’s. Burton returned to UNM and shifted his major from Physics to EE, graduating summa cum laude with a BSEE in 1967. Burton went on to MIT where he received his Sc.D. in 1972
Burton’s Professional Service to Data Analytics:
- 1979 VP of Research at Denelcor, and primary computer architect of the HEP - Heterogeneous Element Processor
- 1985 Fellow at IDA’s Supercomputing Research Center
- 1988 Co-founded Tera Computer Company, and Chairman until 1999, when Tera acquired Cray Research from SGI and renamed itself Cray Inc.
- 2005 Technical Fellow at Microsoft
Highlights of Burton’s previous awards and honors:
- 1991 Eckert-Mauchly Award from IEEE and ACM
- 2003 Seymour Cray Computer Science and Engineering Award and Elected to the National Academy of Engineering – For contributions to the development of parallel computer architecture.
- 2010 Charles Babbage Award and Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS)
2019 Recipient: Bill Carlson
Bill Carlson has provided sustained and ingenious contributions to the field of Data Analytics, particularly pioneering work in understanding sparse data problems at all levels of the system. He has led in all aspects of parallel computing, programming language design and implementation, and hardware architecture. He spearheaded the design of the UPC language, bringing together teams of experts in related languages to define a unified design and was instrumental in pushing for both proprietary and open source compilers to create a community around the UPC language and applications. He also saw the need for a community effort related not just to UPC but the class of Partitioned Global Address Space languages, and helped to establish an annual booth and other activities at the SC conference.
Bill has provided input to Government investments and strategies by connecting their most difficult data science challenges to available and emerging tools and technology. He has participated in major research programs such as HTMT, DARPA HPCS, and most recently Project 38. His insight and articulation of the communication and computational requirements of the Government’s most challenging data analytic applications has enabled these programs to significantly impact both hardware and software support for scalable data analysis in advanced HPC systems. Finally, we acknowledge Bill’s effectiveness at helping all of us over the years work towards common goals --- he finds common ground and never loses sight of the aim of the work.
Bill Carlson has provided sustained and ingenious contributions to the field of Data Analytics, particularly pioneering work in understanding sparse data problems at all levels of the system. He has led in all aspects of parallel computing, programming language design and implementation, and hardware architecture. He spearheaded the design of the UPC language, bringing together teams of experts in related languages to define a unified design and was instrumental in pushing for both proprietary and open source compilers to create a community around the UPC language and applications. He also saw the need for a community effort related not just to UPC but the class of Partitioned Global Address Space languages, and helped to establish an annual booth and other activities at the SC conference.
Bill has provided input to Government investments and strategies by connecting their most difficult data science challenges to available and emerging tools and technology. He has participated in major research programs such as HTMT, DARPA HPCS, and most recently Project 38. His insight and articulation of the communication and computational requirements of the Government’s most challenging data analytic applications has enabled these programs to significantly impact both hardware and software support for scalable data analysis in advanced HPC systems. Finally, we acknowledge Bill’s effectiveness at helping all of us over the years work towards common goals --- he finds common ground and never loses sight of the aim of the work.