BIG DATA

Vice President for Research Julia Fulghum has appointed Professor Susan R. Atlas to serve as the director of the new Center for Advanced Research Computing. Formerly the Center for High Performance Computing, the new CARC will focus on a broader range of research computing and faculty support with the goal of increasing and improving research activity on campus.

Atlas replaces Professor Thomas P. Caudell, who will be spearheading new initiatives and collaborations with the UNM ARTS Lab.

“I’m excited to work with Susan and her staff on initiatives to expand the scope of research computing on campus,” said Fulghum. “The restructuring of the Center will provide increased and improved services to a wide array of faculty that will enhance the research portfolio of the university.

"I would also like to extend my thanks to Professor Caudell. During his tenure, the Center began the process of expanding the base of non-traditional users and increasing collaborations with units across campus. His work has provided a solid foundation from which the new CARC can build upon.”

"I am honored to have the opportunity to lead the Center during this exciting and transformational time,” Atlas says. “I hope to make the Center a home for the most novel and creative computationally-driven research and education, the vibrant exchange of ideas, and most importantly, enable its continued growth as a distinguished center for advanced research computing at UNM.”

Atlas plans to increase the interdisciplinary nature of the Center, working with faculty members in the sciences, engineering, biomedicine, the humanities, and the arts. In addition, she will work to increase extramural funding to the Center and strengthen partnerships with the Health Sciences Center, The New Mexico Computing Applications Center, and the national labs.

Atlas is a member of the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy, with a secondary appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Her research is focused on the study of strongly-correlated electronic and atomic systems and pattern recognition in molecular genomics. She currently serves as director of the UNM Cancer Center Shared Resource for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

She has served as associate director for Science and Engineering Research at the UNM High Performance Computing Education and Research Center (HPCERC) from 1999-2003. Atlas holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Harvard University, and has been a member of the UNM Department of Physics and Astronomy since 1994.