SCIENCE

Distinguished computational scientist Bill Shelton has been named the associate director for Molecular Science Computing at EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He will manage EMSL's high-performance computing capability, including the Chinook supercomputer.

Shelton, who starts Sept. 7 in this role, was a distinguished senior research staff member and a group leader with Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Computer Science & Mathematics Division. He has more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals in the areas of electronic structure and quantum transport, alloy theory and surface science.

He has received several high-performance computing awards, including three Gordon Bell Awards, a Computerworld Smithsonian Award and three Supercomputing High Performance Computing Challenge Awards.

"We're looking forward to the contributions of Bill's scientific excellence and leadership as EMSL looks to increase the impact scientists can have in using our computational capabilities," said EMSL Director Allison Campbell. "He will be instrumental in realizing our vision for integrating theory, modeling and simulation with experiment."

As associate director, Shelton will be responsible for strategy development and stewardship of EMSL's high-performance computing capabilities, including Chinook, which is currently listed 57th in the TOP500 list and set to be replaced in 2013. Shelton also will provide leadership and direction for MSC functional areas including computing and network services, high performance software, MSC operations, and user support and visualization.

Shelton received his undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. He also was a National Academy of Sciences/National Research Post-doctoral fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory before joining ORNL in 1992.