Michela Taufer has been named the MathWorks Professor in the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
The MathWorks Professorship in Scientific Computing was endowed at the University of Tennessee by MathWorks, the leading developer of mathematical computing software used by engineers and scientists worldwide to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development.
Taufer is the founder and director of the Global Computing Lab (GCLab) at UT, which focuses on various aspects of high-performance computing and its application to the sciences. The lab is engaged in the design and testing of efficient computational algorithms and adaptive scheduling policies for scientific computing on graphics processing units (GPU), cloud computing, and volunteer computing.
“Being able to have this endowment is very important for my group and also the university, because it shows the interest of industry partners to work with us at the university,” Taufer said. “They see the value of the University of Tennessee. It’s a trustworthy partner to the point that they’re investing in an endowment. Being selected for that is truly an honor and also a responsibility to represent the university, and the research at the university, at the industry level.”
Taufer has a long history of interdisciplinary research and leadership in collaboration with high-profile computational science and data-intensive research groups across academia, national laboratories, and scientific facilities. Her research focuses on high-performance computing, data-centric and AI-enabled workflows, reproducibility and performance analysis, and scalable software systems for heterogeneous architectures, including multi-core platforms, GPUs, and cloud-HPC–converged environments.
“Dr. Taufer has emerged as a proven leader in the field of scientific computing. We’re proud of her accomplishments thus far and look forward to what’s to come in her new role as the MathWorks Professor at the University of Tennessee,” said EECS Department Head Garrett Rose. “I am very grateful to MathWorks and their support of scientific computing research at UT through the establishment of this named professorship. It’s a testament to a long-established partnership between our organizations that also provides ample opportunity for new collaborative opportunities going forward.”
Positioned for Future Success
Taufer joined the UT faculty in 2018 as the Jack Dongarra Professor of High-Performance Computing, a prestigious professorship established in honor of Dongarra, an emeritus professor at UT and HPC pioneer. Taufer has taken pride in building on the work Dongarra did while at UT to position the university as a leader in the field.
“We have been extremely lucky to have Jack Dongarra bringing so much visibility in high-performance computing,” Taufer said. “High-performance computing has been changing tremendously, with AI and big data playing a role in this change, and I think that my group, with my expertise, is uniquely co-located in a university where we can embrace the next step of high-performance computing and lead what high performance computing is becoming.”
Taufer hopes having the MathWorks professorship title can open doors for future projects between the company and her lab.
“It could be an opportunity to see if we can strengthen any research that my group is currently leaning towards that overlaps with MathWorks. Or perhaps we can explore new ventures that MathWorks finds very relevant for the community,” Taufer said. “It’s an opportunity to revisit the direction of my group and possibly start new experiences or new research directions.”
Taufer feels a sense of gratitude for how much faith the university, the department, and the Tickle College of Engineering have shown by giving naming her the MathWorks professor.
“I do see how much the leadership has been investing in enabling me and my lab to represent the university,” she said. “That is a motivator for me that drives me to do more to get more visibility for the university, because I feel that this university is a gem.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (rpotkey@utk.edu)