Neil joins iVEC from the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) where he has held multiple roles involving application and science support and management of strategic partnerships. Key positions held during his tenure were Head of Scientific Computing and Associate Director in charge of the National Supercomputing Service.

In this latter role he was in charge of all aspects of managing Switzerland’s flagship supercomputing systems, including the introduction and operation of a Cray XT5 that occupied the 21st position on the list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers, provisioning user and application support for systems, and running a merit allocation process.

Neil brings to iVEC his experience in a number of European projects such as the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE ) and the Human Brain Project , which was recently selected as a winner of the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies program. He has a PhD in Mathematics from Cranfield University in the United Kingdom and has over 15 years’ experience in the supercomputing sector.

George is iVEC’s Deputy Director and Head of the Supercomputing Team.

George’s previous role was as Senior Project Leader at EPCC, the leading European supercomputing centre at the University of Edinburgh. During his time at EPCC, George managed a number of high-profile, international projects including being a team leader on the DEISA infrastructure and overall project manager for the middleware program on the International Lattice Data Grid. George has a research background in computational mathematics. He was a research fellow in the Numerical Analysis Group at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, has an Honours Degree in Mathematics from New College, Oxford and a Ph.D. in Computation Mathematics from the University of Strathclyde.

Wendy has over 17 years experience providing administrative support in the context of research and development in the minerals and energy sector. Wendy is employed at 0.4 FTE by CSIRO Exploration and Mining to support the Office of the CEO and staff.

David has worked as a journalist and editor for almost twenty years, covering a diverse range of publications including entertainment, environmental management, medical, science, telecommunications and digital media. He has extensive experience in both print and online media and his most recent role prior to iVEC was Editor of ScienceNetwork WA, Western Australia’s online science news portal. David is employed by CSIRO and has been brought onboard to help define iVEC’s media strategies for the development and launch of the Pawsey Centre.

Valerie Maxville is an experienced educator and manages Supercomputing User Support. Valerie is responsible for training in supercomputing along with internships. She enjoys the challenge of communicating complex concepts to diverse audiences – breaking through the jargon to create a shared understanding. Valerie holds a PhD in Computer Science (Software Engineering) and an honours degree in Computer Science. As an industry volunteer, Valerie actively promotes careers in computing and local industry development. She is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and a Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Karina is an accomplished Marketing Specialist with an impressive record for developing and driving marketing strategies from concept through to in-market execution.

Karina graduated as an Architect and 12 years ago decided to change her path into communication, and since them she has been passionately working in that sector. She has a masters degree in Integrated Marketing Communication. With experience in both small firms and larger corporate environments, she joined iVEC in 2012 as a Marketing and Communication officer, bringing on board her professionalism in marketing, promotions, design and advertising, to create and improve relationships between iVEC, our partners and clients and promote all iVEC’s services and projects.

Daniel is a Marketing and Communications Officer at iVEC.

He works to maintain and develop iVEC’s relationships with its partner organisations, researchers and other stakeholders through a wide range of communication strategies. Daniel brings his passion for writing and communication into his work to help iVEC promote its activities and services.

Daniel holds a Bachelor of Communications in Public Relations and Journalism from Edith Cowan University.

Scott has been involved with IT support since 1988 when he started as Curtin University Computing Lab Manager. Since 1995 he has been employed at CSIRO in a number of different IT roles. During his career he has supported all versions of Windows, many versions of SunOS and Solaris, HPUX, Apollo Domain OS, many distributions of Linux, HDS and DDN storage as well as various backup software packages. He is currently seconded to iVEC in a Data Storage Administration role and is also the Technical Lead for the RDSI project.

Chris is an experienced HPC Application Analyst and Parallel Programmer. He joins iVEC from Paratools, Inc. located in Eugene, Oregon. He was the Principle Investigator in several small business innovative research projects focused on developing HPC tools to support HPC application development and research.

Chris has also worked at University HPC centres both in the United States and in the United Kingdom as a Parallel Programmer. He began his HPC career at the Army Research Laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland as an Application Analyst. He completed his masters degree in Scientific Computing at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden; while his undergraduate degree is in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Prior to beginning his university studies, Chris served six years in the US Navy as a Machinist Mate.

Ashley has a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Curtin University and has recently come from Computer Science and Software Engineering at UWA, with over 10 years of system administration across multiple OS Platforms.

Has an active interest in systems interoperability and a fondness for linux-based systems.

He served as the Western Australia technical operations for “ACM international Collegiate Programming Contest” from 2004 to 2011.

He is a System Administrator for the iVEC@UWA Facility.

Luke is currently employed by iVEC and WAMSI (Western Australian Marine Science Institution) as a Data Adviser. Until recently he was the project manager for the CATAMI project. While employed at iVEC he has worked with IMOS on the development of a WA Node of the Australian Ocean Data Network and worked with the AusCover facility on the TERN project. Before iVEC he worked for the WALIS Office at Landgate and in the university sector through the BlueNet project with a focus on geographic information systems and data management. He holds a BSc (Env. Sci.) with first-class honours from UWA.

Sean has been involved in molecular modelling research and software development for nearly 10 years. He holds a PhD in Molecular Modelling and a BSc(Hons) in Physics. He is currently involved in developing and supporting a wide range of client software aimed at facilitating the use of iVEC resources for research and collaboration purposes. Sean is a member of the Data team at iVEC.

Mark has over 15 years’ experience in geospatial data analysis and mathematical/physical retrieval schemes for atmospheric, oceanic and land-surface properties from satellite and airborne multispectral and hyperspectral observations. Mark holds a MSc in Atmospheric and Oceanic science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BSc (Hons) in Physics from Curtin University. Mark is a member of the Data team at iVEC.

Jenni Harrison is Head of the Data Team at iVEC and a Research Professor at the University of Western Australia. At iVEC, Jenni leads a team who suggest solutions to data workflow challenges and provide access to a variety of data tools and storage options. Jenni also heads various Federal funded projects, including iVEC’s part in the RDSI project.

Jenni joined iVEC from NHS Education for Scotland (NES) where she was leading the development of a number of collaborative digital projects including 3D medical visualisation in real time using haptic technology the development and deployment of virtual patients (avatars) in a 3D games model. Previously to her role at NES, Jenni was the eResearch Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Research Science and Technology (MoRST) in New Zealand. Jenni has a BSc (Hons) is Medicinal Chemistry (University of Glasgow), a PhD in Biological & Computational Chemistry (University of St Andrews) and has recently been awarded a MSc (Distinction) in Digital technology enhanced learning (University of Edinburgh).

Dan’s previous role at ARGANS as Technical Manager was managing, designing and testing processing tool chains for use in the, soon to be launched, European Space Agency’s (ESA) Sentinel missions and Copernicus operations. Furthermore, Dan has experience in numerical modelling of radiative transfer functions of optically complex water. Dan has completed a B.Sc. (Physics) with first class honours and is currently close to finishing a Ph.D. in optical remote sensing at Curtin University.

Paul Newman has extensive experience in systems administration, operating system and hardware support, user support and systems installation. He has good analytical skills, which enable him to quickly identify problems and implement effective solutions.

Paul has a detailed knowledge of systems and technologies and has assisted clients in implementing customised solutions to their requirements.He has provided systems and applications support to users in the mining and petroleum industries. Duties included backup and archival of customer data and writing programs to read and write data in custom formats.

He installed and managed a large network of UNIX workstations used for mine planning, and was responsibly for the successful completion of the project.

Paul’s current interests are Perl and Python programming and image manipulation with GIMP.

Before joining iVEC, Paul worked as a Systems Support Engineer at SGI; as a systems administrator at BHP Engineering and BHP Iron Ore’s Newman mine site; as a Post Sales Support Engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Jeremy has worked in various roles in IT since 1995. He commenced at CSIRO in 2008, and moved to iVEC in 2013. He is part of the Technical Operations Group, and his primary role is the implementation and support of the WA NeCTAR node.

Chris has recently joined iVEC from Curtin University IT Services to take up a new position as Storage Infrastructure Specialist for the RDSI Project.

Gene is a Web Data Portal Adviser at iVEC. He works on the development of a User Portal as part of the redevelopment of the NCMAS application process, as well as other supercomputing and data application processes.

He has worked in the web development field for almost 15 years, having previously worked at the Royal Automobile Club of WA (RACWA), Talent2 and Curtin University, predominantly using Oracle and Java tools. He holds a B.Com (IT) with Distinction from Curtin University.

Darran has an Associate Diploma in Applied Science and has over ten years of experience in systems administration. Darran is currently the Western Australian Grid Administrator for the APAC Grid and is responsible for ensuring that the gridconnections into Western Australia are available and that grid jobs arriving into iVEC arrive at their designated resource.

Andrew joins iVEC from the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) where he was responsible for testing the middleware used across over 170 sites around the world to analyse the data generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). His expertise is in systems administration and large-scale systems.

He has formerly worked on both High Throughput Computing and High Performance Computing systems in varied environments including the first BlueGene/L in Europe and custom hardware for QCDOC. His interests include fabric and configuration management, systems security and telemetry and monitoring.

Daniel is a senior supercomputing applications specialist at iVEC. He has been with iVEC since 2005.

He performs software optimisation and parallelisation on iVEC supercomputers, as well as provides training. His domain expertise is computational quantum chemistry. Daniel also works on prototyping and infrastructure for the SKA Science Data Processor. He has previously worked in industry and government outreach at iVEC and continues this work when required.

Daniel has a PhD with Distinction (Computational and Theoretical Chemistry) from the University of Western Australia.

Christopher is a specialist in the area of heterogeneous high performance computing, in particular GPU-accelerated algorithms. He has previously worked for the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, assisting to scale signal and image processing workflows to the HPC domain. This followed on from his PhD research at the University of Western Australia investigating the use of GPUs in signal correlation. In his current role, Christopher collaborates with researchers to accelerate their code on iVEC supercomputing resources.

Mark is the Systems Administrator of the CCG and he supports the Senior Systems Administrator with the maintenance of the iVEC@Murdoch Facility.

Mohsin is a Supercomputing Application Specialist at iVEC.

He collaborates with researchers to design workflows that can maximise the efficiency of their codes when using iVEC’s supercomputing resources.

His previous research has involved developing programs to simulate physiological cell networks using the power of high performance computing, in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in atherosclerosis, or “hardening” of the arteries. This role helped to develop an application that can scale to massively parallel machines like IBM’s BG/Q or Cray’s XC30. Mohsin holds a PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Canterbury.

Brian is a Supercomputing Application Specialist for iVEC, assisting researchers in developing and optimising parallel codes, primarily in the area of geophysics.

His background is in applied math and high-performance computing and his previous positions include work with a variety of areas of applied science, including biology, chemistry, and geophysics. Brian has experience with accelerators, such as GPU and Intel’s Xeon Phi and he has previously worked at IBM in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The role involved assisting researchers in developing parallel codes to simulate the growth of brain tumours, and made use of IBM’s BlueGene architecture. Brian holds a Masters degree in applied mathematics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and is currently completing a PhD in Scientific Computation at the University of Minnesota.

Kevin is a Supercomputing Applications Specialist at iVEC. He joined iVEC from Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre at the University of Edinburgh.

He has a wide range of experience in high performance computing working with both academic and commercial partners.

Kevin’s particular area of expertise include (classical) molecular modelling and coarse-grained methods (especially complex fluids). He also has experience in geophysical fluid dynamics, engineering, and problems with global optimisation.

Kevin has been experimenting with parallel computing in various guises since his doctorate in condensed matter physics acquired in 1993.

David Schibeci has a BSc with double majors in Computer Science and Mathematics with Honours from Murdoch University. He is a supercomputing system administrator with the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre.

Charlene is a supercomputing application specialist at iVEC.

She collaboratively works with research groups from a wide range of scientific domains, assisting them to make the best use of the supercomputing resources offered by iVEC. She helps researchers develop highly parallel codes, port their codes to supercomputers and reduce their simulation time. She assesses the impacts of new technologies on iVEC’s operation and helps researchers integrate suitable technologies, tools and algorithms in their research. She also delivers training to cover any gaps that researchers have in their supercomputing knowledge.

Charlene holds a doctorate degree in Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, from the University of Western Australia.

Jonathan is part of the iVEC Visualisation Team and is based at iVEC@UWA.

Yathunanthan Sivarajah

Dr Andrew Squelch, R&D Senior Consultant, has over 20 years experience in visualisation and numerical modelling in the context of rock mechanics, mining technologies and virtual reality-based training. He has a PhD from the University of Nottingham. Andrew is a full-time employee of Curtin University of Technology and devotes half his time to iVEC and the other half to the Centre for High Definition Geophysics. Within iVEC, Andrew is responsible for the visualisation facilities at the ARRC Node. He has spent the last four years as an iVEC staff member involved in industry focused applied research and development and outreach activities, data visualisation research, training simulator research and development, and co-supervision of student projects.

Professor Matthew Bellgard is Murdoch University’s Bioinformatics Chair and the Director of the Western Australian State Government Centre of Excellence, the Centre for Comparative Genomics. His scientific work has resulted in developments in the both the areas of pairwise sequence alignment and artificial intelligence, early detection of base composition differences in closely related bacterial species, and advances in the development of web-based integrated systems utilising high performance computing.

At Murdoch University Matthew has played a pivotal leadership role that has seen the progression of bioinformatics research evolve from a small research group to a thriving innovative R&D Centre. The Centre has established a strong track record in contract research and in delivering web-based informatics solutions to a diverse range of organisations including academics, Cooperative Research Centres, state government research facilities and industry.

Matthew’s international experience includes a placement at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany) and a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Genetics (Mishima, Japan).

Paul Bourke is the associate director of the iVEC facility at the University of Western Australia. His research interests include visualisation, computer graphics, geometric algortihms, and digital image processing. During his career he has worked in positions where he concentrated on architectural, brain/medical, and astronomy visualisation. Of particular interest are engaging and immersive display technologies and how they may be used to support scientific visualisation, employed for public outreach and education, and used to create novel exhibits for museums and other public spaces.

Florian has a MSc (Physics) from Curtin University. He has held management positions in the national eResearch space since 2007 and has long established working relationships with senior management of key initiatives such as RDSI, NeCTAR and ANDS. During his time with iVEC he lead the development, deployment and support of national, large scale services which enable the efficient and convenient storage, sharing and transport of data.

As iVEC@Curtin Associate Director and Curtin Associate Director of eResearch Support, he manages the engagement between CITS and Curtinâs research community. His work will focus on closely working with researchers and research support groups to define and develop IT services which provide currently unavailable levels of capabilities and support to researchers.

Jesse is a Visualisation Technology Specialist at the Curtin University Hub for Immersive Visualisation and eResearch (HIVE), a facility part funded by iVEC. He is a Software Engineer by trade, and applies his experience in virtual environments graphics programming to developing visualisations for researchers making use of the Hive and similar facilities run by iVEC.

Darren Gibson is the manager of the Collaborative Research Network (CRN) and the iVEC facility at Edith Cowan University (ECU). At iVEC and within the CRN, Darren provides leadership in collaboration to the ECU research community and seeks new strategic relationships. He also has responsibility within ECU for the development of research data management (guidelines and procedures), eresearch and visualisation. Darren joined ECU from the University of Edinburgh/NHS Lothian where he was managing the Scottish Mental Health Research Network. Previously he had roles within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (Research Governance), Industrial Research Limited in New Zealand (Medicinal Chemistry) and Cyclacel Ltd (Medicinal Chemistry).

Darren has a BSc (Hons) in Medicinal Chemistry (University of Dundee), a PhD in Biological Chemistry (University of St Andrews) and a LLM in Medical Law and Ethics (De Montfort University).

Alf Uhlherr is the Director of the iVEC Facility at CSIRO.

Charise is the administrator at the iVEC@UWA Facility

Akos has been producing training and instructional movies in Australia for over 16 years. His portfolio includes a wide range of clients from industrial giants such as Diamond Offshore, Sedco Forex and Hammersley Iron through mid- and small-sized businesses like Bristow Helicopters, Apache Helicopters, Boral and Kanowna Belle to government agencies like Central TAFE and now The University of Western Australia. His role with iVEC is to produce movies that raise awareness of science in both future students of science as well as the general public.

Khanh Ly is the Computer Support Officer at iVEC@UWA, where he maintains and supports the servers and networks of iVEC@UWA and its High Performance Computing resources. Khanh is also responsible for operating the Access Grid and EVO at iVEC@UWA. He came to iVEC@UWA in 2009 from Telstra, Melbourne. Khanh has a Master’s Degree in Network and Systems from Swinburne University of Technology and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering from The University of Western Australia. His major interests include video conferencing, video streaming and encoding, IP networking technologies and HPC.

Coming soon

Mark Favas from CSIRO IM&T Advanced Scientific Computing has been 100% committed to iVEC by CSIRO to provide high-level network, management and scientific support. With an extensive networking and Unix background, and years of experience in research in computational chemistry, visualisation and remote sensing, Mark designs and maintains the iVEC network and provides system support on complex Unix issues. Mark is Director of iVEC, and manages the iVEC@CSIRO Facility.

Ahmed commenced at CSIRO in 2008 and has provided IT support to Scientists and support staff with various systems . Ahmed has recently been seconded to the iVEC Operations group as a User Support Specialist.