ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has a new director. Richard Knepper, who has been deputy director of CAC since 2017, started his new duties Jan. 24. He succeeds David Lifka, who led the CAC since 2007. Lifka will continue to serve as Cornell’s VP for information technologies and chief […]
ITHACA, N.Y. — The Cornell University Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has a new director.
Richard Knepper, who has been deputy director of CAC since 2017, started his new duties Jan. 24. He succeeds David Lifka, who led the CAC since 2007.
Lifka will continue to serve as Cornell’s VP for information technologies and chief information officer, said Emmanuel Giannelis, VP for research and innovation.
Knepper has received numerous grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and leads a national cyberinfrastructure-resources integration team. He is also the author or co-author of more than 50 papers.
CAC provides research-computing services to Cornell faculty in the sciences, engineering, business, arts, and humanities. Knepper will lead the center’s computing and consulting staff that includes systems professionals and Ph.D.-level computational consultants with expertise in astronomy, biology, computer science, informatics, socials sciences, physics, and more.
“I am excited to see Rich serve as the next director of CAC,” Giannelis said. “Rich’s experience as CAC deputy director and national leadership roles in high performance computing make him the perfect choice to lead the center.”
In addition to high-performance computing, Knepper has worked on campus clouds and federations, reproducible and portable scientific workflows, social-network analysis, and the ethnography of virtual organizations.
He has been involved in the U.S. cyberinfrastructure community for over 20 years supporting both local university initiatives as well as NSF and NASA-funded projects including FutureGrid, Polar Grid, Operation Ice Bridge, the Aristotle Cloud Federation, and XSEDE, Cornell said.