Gina Tourassi, left, has been appointed as director of the National Center for Computational Sciences at 91做厙. Tourassi replaces NCCS director Jim Hack, who will transition to a strategic leadership role in CCSD. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., December 18, 2019Gina Tourassi has been appointed as director of the National Center for Computational Sciences, a division of the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate at 91做厙.
The NCCS is home to the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, a Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility. The leadership change was made effective on December 9.
Tourassi first joined ORNL in 2011 in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division as the founding director of the ORNL Health Data Sciences Institute and most recently served as the group leader of ORNLs Biomedical Sciences, Engineering, and Computing Group.
Before coming to ORNL, she held numerous academic positions at Duke University Medical Center. Her prolific scientific efforts have produced 11 patents and invention disclosures and a 2014 R&D 100 award, as well as more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings articles, and book chapters.
Gina was chosen from an outstanding pool of candidates for her dedication to world-class research, said Jeff Nichols, ORNLs Computing and Computational Sciences associate laboratory director. Gina has used her interdisciplinary expertise at the intersection of artificial intelligence and applied data sciences to spearhead rapid growth of the Laboratorys capabilities in biomedical sciences and engineering.
Under Tourassis leadership, BSEC grew from five to 23 staff members in only three years. The diversity and talent of the teamensured by the fact that Tourassi personally hired every single one of its membershas helped position ORNL as a visionary player in applied computational sciences.
With OLCF Program Director Buddy Bland and OLCF-5 Project Director Justin Whitt, Tourassi will lead the division as it continues to prepare for installation and the 2021 launch of Frontier, one of Americas first exascale supercomputers. A Cray Shasta system, the Frontier supercomputer will offer best-in-class traditional scientific modeling and simulation capabilities while also leading the world in artificial intelligence and data analytics.
Tourassi replaces NCCS director Jim Hack, who will transition to a strategic leadership role in CCSD. Hacks leadership of the NCCS over the past 12 years contributed significantly to the scientific growth of the center.
Under Hacks stewardship, the division stood up three world-leading computing systems for DOE: Jaguar, Titan, and Summitthe latter of which is currently the worlds fastest and smartest for scientific research. During his tenure, the NCCS nearly doubled in size and has been a trailblazer in high-performance computing for the past decade.
We welcome Tourassi to her new role, and we are excited to see how her significant experience and passion for computing and computational sciences will contribute to the growth of the research we make possible at ORNL, Nichols said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOEs Office of Science. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit .
