ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Sandia National Laboratories has appointed Rob Leland as vice president of science and technology and chief technology officer. Sandia executives Duane Dimos and Julia Phillips, respectively, had served in those roles on an acting basis for the past 20 months.
Leland joined Sandia in 1990. With a background in electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as applied mathematics and computer science, he has held leadership positions in several major Sandia efforts. Most recently, he served as director of Sandia’s Computing and Information Sciences Research Foundation and as director of computing research.
He received the 2014 “Test of Time” award from the 2014 Supercomputing Conference for his seminal 1995 paper with Sandia extreme-scale computing senior manager Bruce Hendrickson. The paper put graph partitioning — a method used in many supercomputing efforts today — on a solid basis. He was a leader in Sandia’s dramatic effort to help Cray Inc. develop and manufacture the seminal supercomputer known as Red Storm.
Leland last year was assigned to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where he worked on a White House-led interagency team to develop a new national strategy for high-performance computing.
“We looked at responding to major strategic challenges,” said Leland. “We examined the increasing foreign investment in high-performance computing technology, which has cut into the U.S. technical lead. We familiarized ourselves with erosions of Moore’s Law, the rise of big data, the offshore movement of the U.S. microelectronic industry and the coming end of the current paradigm for supercomputing.”
In announcing the transition, Sandia President and Laboratories Director Paul Hommert said, “Rob brings a distinguished scientific background and a proven ability to develop new strategic directions that will enable him to bring strong leadership to our research agenda.”