Innovators

MESSAGE from the DIRECTOR

Published October 2023

Dear SDSC Staff, Collaborators, Partners, and All Friends:

I hope the summer months renewed your energy and excitement for what the autumn season may bring. We ushered in the fall season by hiring a Chief Technology Officer for SDSC. The inaugural position is held by Rick Wagner, who returned to SDSC October 2 after recently holding technology leadership roles at University of Chicago and UC San Diego ITS. As CTO, Rick will play a key role in the development of SDSC’s high-performance computing and data technology vision and roadmap, bringing together expertise across the center to drive technology innovation and its application to a wide range of research challenges. We are thrilled to welcome him back to SDSC, and I invite you to read more about his appointment in the article about him featured below in the Researcher Spotlight section.

Many of you may be aware of SDSC’s long and continuing connection to General Atomics. We recently entered a new venture together along with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Sapientai, and faculty in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego to support high-priority fusion research. With $7.4 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy we will all work together to develop a Fusion Data Platform (FDP) for advancing high-priority fusion research. You can read more about the project in a news article featured below under SDSC News Highlights.

As part of the UC San Diego campus community, we commemorate Latinx Heritage Month in October with a series of events to help honor the history, culture and contributions of the Latinx community. Next month the campus community will commemorate Native American Heritage Month with a Kickoff Celebration Nov. 9.

As always, thank you for your interest in what we do and for your continued support of our efforts to make the world better in the ways we can.

Best wishes,
Frank Würthwein
SDSC Director