Radha Nandkumar, Ph.D. (Physics), MBA
4012 A NCSA Building
Phone: 217-244-0650 -- FAX: 217-244-2909
Email: radha@ncsa.uiuc.edu or radha.nandkumar@gmail.com
PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION
5/02 Executive MBA,
10/85 PhD (Physics)
Thesis Advisor: Prof. David Pines
10/81 MS (Physics)
6/74 MSc (Physics)
6/72 BSc (Physics)
APPOINTMENTS
Director, International Affiliations, 2001-
Assistant Director, Campus Relations, 2000-
Senior Research Scientist, 1998-
Research Scientist/Allocations Coordinator, 1990-1998
Research Scientist /Staff Associate to the Director- Prof. Larry Smarr, 1989-1994
Applications Scientist, 1987-1989
Systems Consultant, 1985-1987
Post-doctoral Research Associate, Northwestern University, Summer 1985
Research Assistant, Department of Physics,
Teaching Assistant, Department of Physics,
Scientific Associate, Lab. of Astrophysics and Space Research, University of Chicago, 1978-1979
Staff Scientist, Indian Space Research Organization, Bangalore, India, 1974-1978
SUMMARY
Dr. Radha Nandkumar joined the staff of the
She is currently the Director of NCSA’s Campus Relations and International Affiliations Programs. In this role, she has implemented a very well recognized and successful NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellows Program that funds projects with a potential for success by introducing several dozens of faculty from multidisciplinary, cross-cutting themes across the UIUC campus to computational science and to exploit the resources of NCSA and associated information technologies into their research disciplines. Nearly sixty faculty members from different units of campus have been privileged to be NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellows in the last 6 years. In addition to enhancing the visibility for their research and their research potential, each one of them have also seen a significant diversity and increase in their funding base, following their affiliation with this Program.
Dr. Nandkumar is spearheading the International Affiliates
Program for NCSA and has given numerous presentations both within the
She has unique ability to understand the demands and technical developments related to networked, secure high performance computing and communications infrastructure and information technologies. She has excellent scientific and technical research experience, inter-personal skills, management and international outreach experience. She has more than ten publications in peer- reviewed journals related to her research work, and also has given more than 100 presentations related to NCSA’s High Performance Computing infrastructure, applications research and information technologies. Her current research interests are related to brokering and facilitating relationships between researchers and peer-institutions.
She obtained her Ph.
D. in physics from the
CORE COMPETENCIES
|
· Team Leadership Skills |
· Customer Relationship Management |
|
· Resource Planning and Management |
· Technology Transfer & International Outreach |
|
· Corporate Relationships |
· Analytical Skills |
EXPERTISE/KNOWLEDGE
· Vast experience in computational science and engineering with a broad understanding of new and advanced computational methods, programming languages and programming practices in a distributed high-end computing environment.
· Intimate knowledge of projects in computational science and engineering with specific insight into their potential for success and their broader impact on society.
· Deep understanding of the technological trends in research and developments in the areas of information technology, high performance communications and computations.
· Extensive experience in coordinating and distributing computational resources to national researchers in an array of disciplines.
· Demonstrated ability in interacting with leaders in an array of technical fields.
·
Excellent interpersonal skills enabling the
formation of a very successful and highly respected peer review program for
allocating supercomputing resources for the NSF Supercomputer Centers Program . The peer
review process served NCSA, the NSF MetaCenter that
involved all four NSF Centers in the 90’s, and recently, the two NSF
partnerships at
· Knowledge of funding opportunities in federal agencies, proposal writing and review process; Co-organizer of multiple conferences and workshops at NCSA.
· Excellent ability to work productively with, learn from and guide collaborators at all levels, despite widely differing backgrounds and cultures. Leadership qualities include being innovative, practical and results-oriented.
MERITS AND AWARDS
1/76 Distinguished Service Award by the
6/74 Ranked Third in M.Sc.
(Physics) in
6/72 Government of India National Merit Scholarship for M.Sc. course
6/72 Ranked Fifth in B. Sc. (Physics) in
6/69 Government of India National Merit Scholarship Certificate for the B.Sc. course
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
·
Co-Chair
for the Technical Program's Masterworks Sessions for the upcoming IEEE-ACM
Supercomputing 2005 Conference,
·
Fundraising
Chair for the upcoming IEEE-ACM-CRA Richard Tapia 2005 Conference to Diversify
Computing,
·
Invited
Speaker at the upcoming US/Africa Mechanics and Materials Workshop in
·
Invited Speaker and Panelist at the First Asian
Business Conference, UIUC,
·
Publicity
Chair for the IEEE-ACM Grid 2004 Conference,
·
Co-Chair
for the Technical Program's Birds of Feather Sessions for the IEEE-ACM
Supercomputing 2004 Conference,
· Co-chair and Organizer of the Second Middleware in Grid Computing Workshop, International Middleware 2004 Conference, Toronto, October 2004
·
Fundraising
Chair for the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women In Computing Conference,
·
Invited speaker at the
·
Invited participant at the IVOA Interoperability
Meeting,
·
Invited Speaker at the Sri Sathya
Sai Institute of Higher Learning,
·
Invited Speaker at the US-Brazilian
collaboration Workshop in Advanced Mechanics and Materials,
·
Co-organizer,
U.S.-Australian Workshop on High Performance Grid Computing and Applications,
and Principal Investigator of the
·
Co-organizer,
Workshop on Grids, Middleware and Applications, at LNCC,
·
External
advisory committee member for the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing
(APAC) Program for 2004-2006, and Invited participant at the APAC Projects
Workshop, February 2004.
·
Review
Committee Member for the National Science Foundation's East Asia Pacific 2004
Summer Institute Programs, January 2004 -
·
Participated
as one of the Senior Personnel on UIUC's proposal for
the
·
Finance
Chair for the Richard Tapia 2003 Conference to celebrate diversity In
Computing,
·
Co-Chair
for the HPC Challenge of the Technical Program for the upcoming IEEE-ACM
Supercomputing 2003 Conference,
·
Invited participant and NCSA’s representative at
the Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly Meeting at the
·
Chair,
High Performance Computing Panel, Richard Tapia 2003 Conference to Celebrate
Diversity in Computing,
·
FinanceChair
for the Richard Tapia 2003 Conference to celebrate diversity In Computing,
Atlanta, GA, October 2003
·
Invited speaker at the Australian Partnership
for Advanced Computing Conference 2003 in Gold Coast,
· Co-chair for the First Middleware in Grid Computing Workshop, Middleware 2003 Conference, Brazil, June, 2003
·
Co-chair, Terascale
Performance Workshop, International Conference on Computer Science 2003,
·
Invited Panel
Member on a NSF Panel to
·
Invited speaker at the India Abroad Condensed
Matter Physics Conference III,
· Co-Chair for the HPC Challenge of the Technical Program, IEEE-ACM Supercomputing 2002 Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 2002
· Co-Chair for the Fundraising Commitee, Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2002 Conference, Vancouver, BC, October 2002
·
Invited participant at the U.S-UK Petaflop Computing Workshop,
·
Invited Team Member on a NSF Panel to
·
Invited presentations at more than 2 dozen
institutions across
· Faculty Management Committee – University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, 2001 - present
· Reviewer for Panel on Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence at the NSF in August 1998
· Invited participant in the “APEX workshop” at the NSF in May 1998 which was instrumental in the creation of the $70M/year PACI program and the more recent Terascale initiative.
·
Led, coordinated and hosted the National
Resource Allocation Committee Meeting under the auspices of the NSF Partnership
for Advanced Computational Infrastructure Program at the NSF in February 1998.
Computing resources totaling 11.5 million normalized cpu hours with an estimated dollar value of $20M on
16 different high performance computing platforms at the leading edge sites of
the National Computational Science Alliance at
·
Designed
and implemented a secure intranet server and repository for allocation of
computing resources and proposal review submissions and proposal processing in
1995 that is still in use at NCSA.
· Coordinated and hosted the 1996 MetaCenter Allocations Committee Meeting in at the NSF in February 1996, in addition to serving as NCSA’s leader at the annual meetings during 1993-1996. This collaboration among all four NSF Supercomputer Centers allocated more than 7.5 million normalized cpu hours valued at $20M per year on 10 different supercomputing platforms.
· Coordinated and hosted the Joint NCSA/Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center quarterly Peer Review Board quarterly meetings from June 1990 to June 1997; responsible for allocating 80% of systems cpu time available at the centers, valued at~$20M annually.
· Co-organized three conferences at NCSA (October 1993, May 1993 and October 1992); obtained funding for two of them from the NSF, and from corporate contributions for the third.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
11/85-present
1/01 – present International
Affiliates Program Director
Spearheaded the international
Affiliates Program for NCSA and currently directs it. This program extends opportunities to
international institutions with similar goals and missions to partner with NCSA to support cutting-edge research and establish
interdisciplinary and global collaborations in computational science and technology, and develop the
infrastructure necessary to foster such collaborations. The Affiliates
program provides opportunities for demonstrations of grid technologies for
furthering discipline specific research, short-term
and long-term visits and staff exchange with affiliated institutions, and
promotes interaction, collaboration and co-operation. In the last two years, successful
affiliations have been developed with
1/00-present Senior
Research Scientist /Assistant Director, NCSA Office of Campus Relations
Direct
the NCSA/UIUC Faculty Fellows Program that is funded jointly by NCSA and UIUC.
Promote awareness of opportunities to work productively with NCSA on campus by developing new partnerships with UIU faculty, identify,
fund and support the success of new and innovative projects. Enable and provide mechanisms to showcase the
success of such projects via events such as seminars, workshops, symposia, and, site visits, joint proposal
submissions, NCSA publications etc.
Serves as a strategic point of contact representing
NCSA senior management in matters involving the UIUC and the University’s NCSA
Campus Advisory Committee.
9/98-1/00 Senior Research
Scientist/Scientific Computing Division
Strategic
Planning and Research Activities include providing coordinated effort for the
Director’s office for data mining activities specifically related to analyzing
and tracking trends, patterns and demands in Leading Edge Site and
9/90-9/98 Research
Scientist/Allocations Coordinator
Managing NCSA’s high performance and supercomputing resource distributions and allocations to the national academic community via the national peer review board and leading, coordinating and hosting all the Peer Review Board meetings. Establishing policies and procedures for peer review and allocation of all high performance computational resources at NCSA, the MetaCenter, and most recently the Alliance Partnerships and the PACI program.
Direct involvement in NCSA’s strategic planning of computational environment, upgrade paths and generating strategic reports periodically to the NSF, and NCSA’s quarterly reports and annual program plan and contributing to the renewal proposal submissions to the NSF for maintaining a leading edge computational center at NCSA. Studying trends in computational science and engineering projects at the NSF Centers; providing competitive intelligence analysis for the center, participating in NSF site reviews; contributing, editing and reviewing articles for NCSA’s premiere publications.
5/89-3/94 Research
Staff Associate to the Director/Research Scientist
Carried out specialized, creative and research functions in the Director’s Office including the coordination of the Computing and Data Processing Panel of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Survey Committee of the National Research Council during 1989-1990, for the NCSA Director.
Led efforts in strategic planning and program development for a variety of activities at NCSA
Chaired the NCSA committee that
established and implemented policies and procedures, schedules, hardware and
software acquisitions, and solicited friendly users on new high performance
computing systems.
4/87-4/89 Applications
Scientist
Provided discipline specific application software support to end users in Astronomy, Chemistry and Physics; installed software, created utilities, provided user support and interacted with NCSA users at all levels. Supervised undergraduate and graduate student trainees, training new entrants and junior staff. Participated in beta testing and quality control of NCSA’s software development efforts.
11/85-3/87 Systems
Consultant
Advised and assisted researchers at all levels in the use of NCSA’s high performance computing and communications environments. Provided end-user training, provided online and on-site consulting, supervised and trained graduate and undergraduate student consultants; contributed to user documentation and user manuals.
7/85–8/85 Post Doctoral Research Associate, Department of Physics and Astronomy,
Northwestern
University,
Developed software programs for data retrieval for a gamma ray detector payload on board the Gamma Ray Observatory in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Institute.
1/80–6/85 Graduate
Student, Department of Physics
Research in neutron star structure from pulsar timing observations in the Theoretical Astrophysics Group under Prof. David Pines, as a Graduate Research Assistant.
Taught two undergraduate sections of an
elementary Physics course with laboratory, using PLATO systems, as a Teaching
Assistant, during the first year.
9/78–
10/79 Scientific
Assistant, Laboratory for Astrophysics and Space Research
Analyzed data from the Cosmic-ray
Electron Experiment on board the ISEE-3 satellite. Prototyped and calibrated payloads for a balloon flight.
7/74-6/78 Scientific
Assistant, X-ray Astronomy Group
Designed, fabricated and tested scientific payloads for the first Indian scientific satellite “Aryabhata”. Conducted cosmic-ray studies and experimental observations of X-ray astronomical objects using satellite and rocket borne payloads. Designed, fabricated and tested detectors used in these experiments, and analyzed scientific and telemetry data obtained from these payloads. Published results from those in peer-reviewed international scientific publications/journals.
MEMBERSHIPS in PROFESSIONAL
SOCIETIES
Association for Computing Machinery
American Physical Society
Association of University Technology Managers
REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
“Post-Glitch Relaxation Following the Ninth Glitch of the Vela Pulsar” – H.F. Chau, P.M. McCulloch, Radha Nandkumar, and D. Pines, Astrophys. Journal, 413, L113 (1993)
“Vortex creep theory and the internal temperature of neutron stars: timing noise in pulsars” – M.A. Alpar, Radha Nandkumar and David Pines, Astrophys. Journal, 311, 257 (1986)
“Vortex creep theory and the internal temperature of neutron stars: the Crab pulsar and PSR0525+21” – M.A. Alpar, Radha Nandkumar and David Pines, Astrophys. Journal, 288, 191 (1985)
“Transport Coefficients of dense matter in the liquid metal regime” – Radha Nandkumar and C.J. Pethick, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 209, 511 (1984)
“Rocket X-ray observations of 4U0115+63” – D.P.Sharma, M.S.Radha and B.V.Nagaraja, Astrophysics and Space Science, 92, 317 (1983)
“The energy spectrum of cosmic-ray electrons 5-150 MeV in late 1978 and early 1979” – Paul Evenson, Peter Meyer and Radha Nandkumar, Proceedings of the XVI International Cosmic-ray Conference, Kyoto, Japan, 1, 462 (1979)
“Cosmic soft
X-ray observations using a Centaure rocket payload” –
D.P.Sharma, M.S.Radha
U.R.Rao and K.Kasturirangan,
Paper presented at the Space Sciences Symposium in
“Observations of Cyg
X-1 from Aryabhata” – U.R.Rao and K.Kasturirangan,
D.P.Sharma and M.S.Radha,
Nature, 260, 307 (1976)
“X-ray Observations of GX17+2 and GX9+9
by Aryabhata” –
K.Kasturirangan, U.R.Rao, D.P.Sharma and M.S.Radha,
Nature, 260, 226 (1976)
“High energy cosmic-ray intensity
variations associated with the unusual Forbush
decrease of August 1972” – M.S.Radha, U.R.Rao and A.G.Ananth, Indian
Journal of Radio and Space Physics, 4, 206 (1975)