SCIENCE

Jen-Hsun Huang, a seminal figure in visual and parallel computing, and NVIDIA’s co-founder, president and CEO, will deliver the SC11 keynote address at Seattle’s Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

SC11, the 24^th annual conference in the SC series, will take place November 12–18 at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle.  Huang’s address will launch the official start of the conference technical program at 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, November 15, 2011.   He will discuss the scientific milestones and challenges facing supercomputing designers as they pursue the advanced computational needs of the future.

Under Jen-Hsun Huang’s leadership, NVIDIA invented the graphics processing unit (GPU) in 1993, and has since developed high-performance GPU-based computing solutions for devices ranging from today’s advanced superphones and high-end gaming PCs, to enterprise workstations and supercomputers.

“Jen-Hsun Huang’s demonstrated leadership in parallel computing is well suited to the data-intensive thrust of the conference and the sustained performance focus of the Technical Program,” said Scott Lathrop, general chair of SC11 and director of outreach, and training for the National Science Foundation Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project. “As we look to a world of rapid collection and analysis of data with computational resources reaching exascale proportions, we value the opportunity to hear Huang's vision for how the community can address the huge demands for data-intensive computing and faster time-to-discovery.”

Jen-Hsun Huang has served since NVIDIA’s inception as president and CEO, and as a member of the board of directors.  Today, NVIDIA holds more than 1,900 patents issued worldwide, including ones covering designs and insights fundamental to modern personal, scientific and high-performance computing.

As Maggie Shields of the British Broadcasting Corporation summed up in her January 14, 2010 interview “Jen-Hsun Huang does not come across as your typical company boss. The president of a multi-billion-dollar company, [NVIDIA’s] Mr. Huang eschews the ordinary trappings of corporate success.”

Huang is a recipient of the Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award from the Global Semiconductor Association in recognition of his exceptional contributions to driving the development, innovation, growth, and long-term opportunities of the fabless semiconductor industry.  In 1999, Ernst and Young LLP named him Entrepreneur of the Year in High Technology “in recognition of his achievement in building NVIDIA from a start-up to one of the world's leading suppliers of high performance 3D graphics processors.” He also received the Daniel J. Epstein Engineering Management Award from the University of Southern California, and an honorary doctorate from Oregon State University.

Prior to founding NVIDIA, Huang held engineering, marketing, and general management positions at LSI Logic, and was a microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices.  He holds a BSEE degree from Oregon State University and an MSEE degree from Stanford University.

In 2008, he donated $30 million to his alma mater to help build a modern and sustainable destination for education and research, the Jen-Hsun Huang School of Engineering Center.

Jim Plummer, dean of the Stanford University School of Engineering, said Huang's accomplishments demonstrate the type of leadership and entrepreneurship they want to impart to students.

“As we’ve strived to build a culture of collaboration and innovation to meet the goals of solving problems through research and educating leaders, we've realized the need for a physical center to focus that aspiration,” Plummer said in a press release about the new school. “We are grateful to Jen-Hsun for making this a reality.”

The SC11 Technical Program features peer-reviewed papers covering a broad spectrum of technical research as well as panel discussions featuring research and industry leaders, tutorials, workshops and more. The technical program interactive calendar is available online atwww.sc11.supercomputing.org/schedule.  Early-bird registration is available until October 17; more details are available at http://sc11.supercomputing.org/?pg=registration.html.
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