Product Architect, Systems Group
Sun Microsystems Inc.

Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and employee number one, is a product architect with the Systems Group. Andy works with the Systems Group to help drive next generation X64 and storage servers product architecture as well as HPC opportunities.

Bechtolsheim has more than 25 years of Network Computing knowledge and expertise. He was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems where he held a variety of roles including Vice President of Technology and Chief Architect of Sun's highly successful workstation product line. He invented the "Stanford University Network workstation" that eventually became the Sun-1 Workstation and was instrumental in launching other successful Sun products, including the SparcStation 1.

Bechtolsheim left Sun in 1995 to found Granite Systems, a Gigabit Ethernet start-up company, that was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1996. Andy became Vice President of Engineering and later Vice President General Manager of Cisco's Gigabit Systems business which developed the Catalyst 4000 family, the industry's highest volume modular Ethernet switching platform.

Bechtolsheim returned to Sun in 2004 via the Kealia, Inc. acquisition, a company which he co-founded to develop advanced server technology.

Bechtolsheim received a MS in computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1976 and he was a PhD student in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University from 1977 to 1982. He has been honored with a Fulbright scholarship, a German National Merit Foundation scholarship, the Stanford Entrepreneur Company of the year award, the Smithsonian Leadership Award for Innovation and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Vice President, HPC & Cloud Computing Sales
Sun Microsystems Inc.

Marc Hamilton is Vice President of HPC and Cloud Computing sales for Sun's Global Sales and Services organization. His group is responsible for architecting some of the largest supercomputers in the world including the Ranger supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and the TSUBAME supercomputer at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TiTech). Hamilton is also responsible for Sun's commercial HPC customers in varied industries including financial services, life sciences, energy, media/entertainment, and manufacturing. His group is also working with customers and service providers implementing their own cloud infrastructure based on the Sun Cloud technology.

Hamilton has over 15 years experience at Sun and previously held roles as VP of Systems Sales in North American, VP of Systems sales for the Americas, and VP of Solaris marketing. As VP of Solaris marketing, Hamilton was responsible for Sun's Solaris OEM agreements with Dell and IBM, and also launched "Project Indiana" which became the current OpenSolaris program. Hamilton helped start Sun's Global Education and Healthcare Sales group in 1999 where he was a Senior Director. Prior to that, Hamilton held a number of sales and systems engineering management roles in Sun's sales organization.

Prior to Sun, Hamilton worked at TRW developing HPC applications for the US aerospace and defense industry. He has published a number of technical articles and is the author of the book, "Software Development, Building Reliable Systems". Mr. Hamilton holds a BS degree in Math and Computer Science from UCLA, an MS degree in Electrical Engineering from USC, and is a graduate of the UCLA Executive Management program.

For more information, please visit his blog at http://blogs.sun.com/marchamilton.

Executive Director of the Computational Center for Mobility Systems
Clemson University

Dr. James H. Leylek is the Executive Director of the Clemson University Computational Center for Mobility Systems (CU-CCMS) and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Clemson University. Dr. Leylek created CU-CCMS which is a very comprehensive, world-class computational center at the new, 252 acre Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) campus in Greenville, SC. CU-CCMS offers a high concentration of outstanding talent possessing unique simulation capabilities in many diverse fields. CU-CCMS houses massive computer infrastructure, developed in partnership with Sun Microsystems, which enables successful resolution of design, optimization, research, and development issues encountered primarily in the automotive as well as in aviation/aerospace, and energy industries. CU-CCMS offers "one-stop" shopping through multiple technical groups ranging from computational aerodynamics to electromagnetism.

Dr. Leylek's primary research approach involves the development and validation of physics based, simple, robust, and economical computational methods with true predictive capabilities. Specific application areas include automotive IC engine intake systems, aerodynamics, and gas turbine heat transfer, film cooling, steady and unsteady axial turbine & compressor flows. As a specialist in computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer, he conducts research in CFD methods development, steady and unsteady turbulence modeling, and complex problems found in gas turbine and automotive applications. He has published, along with his graduate students, over 50 technical papers in archival journals, national and international conferences. Prof. Leylek joined the Clemson University faculty in 1993, after working for GE Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati for over nine years.

Prof. Leylek has won many national and international awards including the ASME Gas Turbine Award, ASME/IGTI Turbomachinery Best Paper Award, Arch T. Colwell Award from the SAE, ASME/CIE Best Paper Award, and the AIAA Outstanding Service Award. He is an active member of ASME/IGTI Heat Transfer and Turbomachinery Committees. His professional society memberships include the ASME, AIAA, SAE and ASEE.

Prof. Leylek received all his degrees from the University of Illinois.  He earned his Ph.D.  in 1984 in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  His M.S. and B.S. degrees were received in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1979 and 1976, respectively.  As an undergraduate and graduate student he worked at the Argonne National Lab and Energy Resources Center, a multi-disciplinary research facility at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Policy Director for the HPC Initiative
Council on Competitiveness

David Padgham is policy director for the High Performance Computing (HPC) Initiative at the Council on Competitiveness. In this role, he works to foster government-university-industry partnerships focused on promoting greater use of HPC in support of innovation in the United States. Previously, he was an associate program officer at the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National Research Council. His work there comprised a robust mix of writing, research and project management, and he contributed to the development and publication of numerous CSTB studies.  Prior to CSTB, Padgham was a policy analyst with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), working closely with ACM's public policy committee, USACM, to develop and support the organization's policy principles and promote its policy interests.  He holds a master's degree in library and information science (2001) from Catholic University of America in Washington, and a Bachelor of Arts in English (1996) from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C.

Senior Manager, Throughput Computing
Intel Corporation

Dr. Nash has been at Intel since October 2005, and currently manages the Throughput Computing  efforts in the Server Product Group. His responsibilities include the strategy and marketing efforts around Intel® QuickAssist Technology enabled Accelerators, and other technologies related to throughput computing. His prior responsibilities at Intel included being the World Wide Web Consortium Advisory Committee representative from Intel. Prior to joining Intel as part of the acquisition of Conformative Systems, an XML Accelerator Company, he has served in several senior executive positions in the industry including being the Director of System Architecture at Conformative Systems, CTO/VP of Engineering at MSU Devices, and Director of Java Program Office and Wireless Software Strategy in the Digital Experience Group of Motorola, Inc. Dr. Palaniswamy holds a B.S. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Anna University (Chennai, India) and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in Electrical and Computer Engineering. 

Strategic Marketing Manager for technical Computing
Intel Corporation

Wes Shimanek is the Strategic Marketing Manager for Technical Computing in Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group.  Shimanek, a graduate from Purdue University, has been involved in the marketing, development and design workstation and high performance computing technologies for over 29 years. He has also led teams in adopting custom, off the shelf solutions in order to significantly reduce the product cost, risk, and time to market of complex medical imaging systems.

Vice President and General Manager, Infrastructure Division
Univa UD

Gary Tyreman's career in product commercialization, taking a technology concept through the entire product lifecycle in a timely manner, spans more than 16 years. He has directed in excess of 200 product launches and driven more than US$600 Million in software revenue generation in a range of technology companies from start-ups to hundred million dollar product lines. At Univa UD, Gary is Vice President and General Manager of the High-Performance Computing Division. In this role he oversees all aspects of the company's HPC business, including strategic planning, engineering, marketing, sales and business development. He also directs the growth of the company's online open source community.

Prior to joining Univa UD in 2008, Gary was Vice President and Business Manager for Platform Computing HPC division. During nearly five years there, he led the company's business planning, innovation and product management efforts while marshaling a team that developed some of the industry's most popular software. Tyreman was among the first in the industry to recognize the emerging entry-level user in the HPC space and was responsible for developing a vision for how to simplify running applications off the shelf, a key to unlocking value among organizations new to HPC. He worked with Intel Corp. to develop his innovations, which were taken into account when Intel announced the Intel Cluster Ready program last year, making it easier to design, build, sell, program, acquire and deploy clusters built with Intel components. Prior to his tenure at Platform Computing, Tyreman held a variety of executive positions in product management and marketing in technology growth companies, including Hummingbird, Delano and Itemus.

Gary is actively involved in the standards community and has held key positions in the X Consortium (X.org) and Open Grid Forum.