Dr. Francine Berman

Director
San Diego Supercomputer Center


Dr. Francine Berman is Professor in the UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Fellow of the ACM, and first holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD. Dr. Berman is a pioneer in Grid Computing and an international leader in the development of Cyberinfrastructure. She has worked extensively in the areas of adaptive middleware, parallel programming environments, scheduling, and high performance computing.

Since 2001, Dr. Berman has served as Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) where she leads a staff of 300+ interdisciplinary scientists, engineers, and technologists. SDSC is internationally known for its leadership in data-oriented science, technology, and Cyberinfrastructure, and its deep expertise in high performance computing and applications. As Director of SDSC, Dr. Berman is considered both a visionary and a pragmatist, and is a national advocate for the development of a comprehensive data Cyberinfrastructure.

Dr. Berman is one of the two founding Principal Investigators of the National Science Foundation's TeraGrid project, and also directed the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI), a consortium of 41 research groups, institutions, and university partners with the goal of building national infrastructure to support research and education in science and engineering. She has served on a broad spectrum of national and international leadership groups and committees including the National Science Foundation's Engineering Advisory Committee, the National Institutes of Health's NIGMS Advisory Committee, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology Board of Trustees, and others. She is currently serving as co-Chair for the international Blue Ribbon Task Force for Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access. For her accomplishments, leadership, and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum.