September 22, 2004

San Diego Supercomputer Center
Names Vijay Samalam Executive Director
Appointment marks progress in SDSC’s
mission to create a world-class cyberinfrastructure

By Ashley Wood

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego announced today that Dr. Vijay Samalam has been appointed SDSC executive director. In this role, Dr. Samalam will report to SDSC director, Dr. Francine Berman.

“As executive director, Vijay will be an outstanding addition to a strong team of leaders at SDSC designing, developing, and deploying a national Cyberinfrastructure,” said Berman. “His strong technical background, outstanding management skills, and service orientation are already helping SDSC provide a model for a next-generation Cyberinfrastructure Center.”

Dr. Samalam joined SDSC in 2003 as program director of networking. Previous to coming to SDSC, Dr. Samalam was vice president for architecture and chief technology officer for Lucent Technologies’ core switching division, where he oversaw the development of the company’s next generation optical network. He also worked for more than a dozen years with GTE Laboratories.

Before entering the data communications industry, Dr. Samalam researched and taught at the University of Florida where his main focus was solid-state physics.

“SDSC provides an opportunity to work with an outstanding interdisciplinary staff on some of science’s most challenging problems,” said Samalam. “I look forward to working with the SDSC team and I believe that we can make a real difference.”

About SDSC
The mission of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) is to innovate, develop, and deploy technology to advance science. SDSC is involved in an extensive set of collaborations and activities at the intersection of technology and science whose purpose is to enable and facilitate the next generation of scientific advances. Founded in 1985 and primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), SDSC is an organized research unit of the University of California, San Diego. With a staff of more than 400 scientists, software developers, and support personnel, SDSC is an international leader in data management, grid computing, biosciences, geosciences, and visualization. For more information, see www.sdsc.edu.

Media contact: Greg Lund, (858) 534-8314 or Ashley Wood, (858) 534-8363