SYSTEMS

Santa Clara, Calif. -- Sun Microsystems, Inc. today honored Dr. Alistair Rendell, renowned computational chemistry researcher and faculty member of Australian National University (ANU), with the prestigious title of Sun Lecturer. Dr. Rendell, who received only the second Sun Lecturer award, is known for his research in computational science. Last year, the company recognized Dr. Steven Newhouse of Imperial College for his extraordinary contributions in the global grid and e-science community. Sun established the honor as a means to recognize an elite cadre of researchers who have made significant advancements in computational research. Dr. Rendell begins his role as Sun Lecturer on Monday, Nov. 18 at the IEEE SuperComputing 2002 conference in Baltimore, where he will lead an all-day workshop on compiler technology and optimization methods. The session, entitled "Performance Programming: Theory, Practice and Case Studies," will take place from 8:30 to 5:00 p.m. EST. "Alistair Rendell is widely respected by his peers as a pioneer in computational research," said Brian Hammond, market manager of Chemical Sciences, Global Education & Research, Sun Microsystems. "The Sun Lecturer honor is only bestowed on those with the deepest knowledge in their field, and Sun is proud to be associated with Dr. Rendell and his groundbreaking research." Dr. Rendell is a senior lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at ANU, where he is responsible for the university's new undergraduate degree program in computational science. He instructs on topics such as computer architecture, scientific computation and parallel systems. Author of more than 50 journals, his research interests lie in the development and application of quantum chemical methods, and in the broad area of high performance parallel computing applied to scientific computation. For five years he led the computational chemistry group at ANU, directing and promoting a number of industrial collaborative projects concerned with the porting, optimization and development of computational chemistry packages. Recently he was awarded a grant of $498,000 over three years from the Australian Research Council for a collaborative project with Sun Microsystems and Gaussian Inc. The project is concerned with the development of new and efficient electronic structure algorithms for contemporary shared memory parallel computers. Dr. Rendell worked as a staff scientist in the Advanced Research Computing group at Daresbury Laboratory in the UK. During this period he developed quantum chemical algorithms for massively parallel computers. For a complete listing of Dr. Rendell's publications, visit http://cs.anu.edu.au/people/Alistair.Rendell/pub.html. Sun in Education Sun is a leading provider of open network computing solutions to colleges and universities around the world, powering academic, research and high performance computing systems, campus administration, digital libraries and student instruction systems. In addition, Sun is committed to connecting the world's students to the Internet, beginning with primary and secondary schools and extending to all levels of higher education. For information about Sun in Education's computational biology programs, please visit http://www.sun.com/edu/hpc.