Ed Seidel

Edward Seidel (born August 21, 1957) is director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, a Founder Professor in the Department of Physics, and a professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began these positions in January 2014.
From September 2012 until January 2014, he was the senior vice president for research and innovation at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. Previously, he was the assistant director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation and was director of NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure.
Before moving to NSF, Seidel was the founding director of the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Seidel is a career computer scientist and physicist who has received a number of awards for his work. His most noted achievements are in the field of numerical relativity, which involves solving Einstein's equations on computers. Seidel's research groups are known for modeling black hole collisions and for work in scientific computing. Seidel is also a co-founder of the Cactus Framework.
In Louisiana, Seidel served as the first Chief Scientist for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, which connects supercomputing resources throughout Louisiana to enable faster and more accurate research collaboration.
Seidel, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Yale University, moved to Baton Rouge to lead the CCT in 2003. Prior to his work at CCT, he was with the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany and also worked as a research scientist and professor at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In November 2006, Seidel received the Sidney Fernbach Awardat the Supercomputing Conference in Tampa, Florida."For outstanding contributions to the development of software for HPC and Grid computing to enable the collaborative numerical investigation of complex problems in physics; in particular, modeling black hole collisions." This award, which is one of the highest honors in computing, was awarded for his achievements in numerical relativity.
Ed Seidel was also awarded the Heinz-Billing-Preisof the Max Planck Society in 1998, and shared the Gordon Bell Prize in 2001 with colleagues.
Seidel is related to Chicago artist Emory Seidel.