Cray endows HPC graduate fellowship in Kennedy’s Honor

Cray endows HPC graduate fellowship in Kennedy’s Honor

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News Staff

Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. has endowed a graduate fellowship fund for high-performance computing (HPC) at Rice in honor of the late Ken Kennedy.

Mackale Joyner, one of Kennedy’s former doctoral students, has been selected as the first recipient of the Ken Kennedy-Cray Inc. Graduate Fellowship Award. The fellowship fund, which Cray established with a $150,000 gift, will provide support to graduate students with a preference given to those involved in high-performance computing.

MACKALE JOYNER

“From his pioneering work in FORTRAN optimization to his contributions in parallel programming models, Ken Kennedy helped shaped the way we view HPC software today,” said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. “It’s critical that his important work in these areas is continued. We congratulate Mack Joyner in receiving the first Ken Kennedy-Cray Inc. Graduate Fellowship Fund award and are honored that Cray is able to help advance HPC in this way.”

Kennedy, the founder of Rice’s nationally ranked computer science program and one of the world’s foremost HPC experts, died Feb. 7 after a long battle with cancer. A distinguished scholar and author, Kennedy earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Rice in 1967 and returned to join the university’s faculty four years later. In his 36-year career at Rice, Kennedy rose to the rank of University Professor and founded the Department of Computer Science and the cross-disciplinary Computer and Information Technology Institute (CITI).

Kennedy earned a worldwide reputation for leadership and served on Cray’s board of directors from 1989 until his death. He also served as director for a number of focal HPC organizations and entities, including the Center for Research on Parallel Computation and the Virtual Grid Application Development Software Project, both of which were supported by the National Science Foundation, and the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute.

“We want to thank Cray for helping us honor an esteemed colleague and extend his prolific work in HPC,” said Sallie Keller-McNulty, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Engineering. “Rice University has a long tradition of excellence in computing and engineering sciences and the Ken Kennedy-Cray Inc. Graduate Fellowship Fund will help remarkable students continue this tradition.”

Kennedy was Joyner’s Ph.D. adviser from 2002 until the time of his death. Joyner, who earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Rice, said Kennedy had a profound influence on his life.

“He was the one who first suggested I go to graduate school, and I don’t think I’d be earning a Ph.D. and pursuing an academic career if it weren’t for him,” Joyner said. “He talked to me as I was turning in the final in COMP 412, his senior-level compiler class. At that point I had a job offer, and I had never thought about going to graduate school. He talked to me about what he did, the freedom that he had in academia, and he told me I could come to work for him.”

The announcement of Joyner’s fellowship coincides with the Dec. 7 “Workshop in Memory of Ken Kennedy,” a daylong celebration of Kennedy’s life and accomplishments sponsored by CITI, Rice’s Department of Computer Science and Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering. For registration information, visit http://citi2.rice.edu/WS07/.