Exascale Project Names a New Leader

The Exascale Computing Project (ECP) has named Doug Kothe its new director. Kothe replaces Paul Messina, who is is stepping down after two years to return to his work at Argonne National Laboratory. Kothe, a 32-year veteran of the DOE national laboratory system, will assume his duties at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, host of the ECP project.

According to the official announcement, “Exascale is the next level of performance for HPC. Today’s petascale systems are measured in quadrillions (10¹⁵) of calculations per second. Exascale systems will run at quintillions (10¹⁸) of calculations per second, more realistically simulating the processes involved in applications such as precision medicine, manufacturing, fuels and energy systems, and the nation’s stockpile stewardship program, as well as the unseen physics at work within materials and the fundamental forces of the universe. Exascale also holds tremendous potential for emerging disciplines such as large-scale data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.”

The ECP is a collaboration between the DOE Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration and includes experts from six leading national laboratories, including Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Sandia, as well as experts from industry and academia.