Who's Who
- Prof. Martyn Guest – Director of ARCCA
- Dr. Christine Kitchen – Manager of ARCCA
- Mr. Chris Bording – Parallel Programmer
- Mr. Huw Lynes – System Administrator, ARCCA
- Dr. James Osborne – Application Support Engineer
- Dr. Hugh Beedie – Chief Technology Officer (CTO) INSRV & ARCCA
INSRV Affiliates:
- Dr. Christopher Dickson
Professor Martyn F. Guest
Professor Martyn F. Guest is Director of Advanced Research Computing at Cardiff University. He obtained his B.Sc. in Chemistry from Sussex University in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry, also from Sussex, in 1971 under the direction of Prof. J.N. Murrell. Following a postdoctoral position with Prof. I.H. Hillier at the University of Manchester, Dr. Guest joined the Science and Engineering Research Council in 1972, first at the Atlas Computer Laboratory (Chilton, Oxfordshire), and from 1979 at the Daresbury Laboratory near Warrington. He spent three years as Senior Chief Scientist and Technical Group Leader of the High Performance Computational Chemistry Group at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, Washington, USA). Dr Guest returned to the UK in 1995 as Associate Director of the Computational Science and Engineering Department at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory (UK) before taking up his present position at Cardiff University in Mach 2007.
Dr. Guest is presently an Honorary Professor in Physics at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Reader in Chemistry at the University of Manchester. His research interests cover a variety of topics in the development and application of computational chemistry methods on high performance computers. Dr. Guest is lead author of the GAMESS-UK electronic structure program, and has written or contributed to more than 230 articles in the areas of theoretical and computational chemistry, and high performance computing.
Dr. Christine A. Kitchen
Dr Christine Kitchen is the Manager of the Advanced Research Computing (ARCCA) Division at Cardiff University. She obtained her B.Sc in Chemistry from Sheffield University in 1996 and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 2001, also awarded by Sheffield University. Her post-graduate research was performed under the guidance of Prof. B. T. Pickup at Sheffield University and Dr. J.A. Grant at Zeneca (now AstraZeneca) Pharmaceuticals. Following the award of her doctorate, Dr. Kitchen spent a further 3 years in the Molecular Modelling and Drug Design group at AstraZeneca (Alderley Park, Cheshire, UK). Here, she undertook research on a grid-based Poisson-Boltzmann model to predict the electrostatic properties of molecules, and acted as the system administrator responsible for a variety of SGI systems and a Linux Cluster.
Dr. Kitchen joined the Distributed Computing (DisCo) group, part of the Computational Science and Engineering Department at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory (Warrington, UK) in January 2004. During her time at Daresbury she led the Commercial Outreach and Training activity within the DisCo group where she undertook a variety of roles, from system administrator through to interactions with Universities and Industry, providing technical expertise to assist various sites with mid-range cluster computing.
Dr. Kitchen started her current position at Cardiff University in September 2007.
Mr Christopher Bording
Chris is the Parallel Programmer for the Advance Research Computing Division.
He obtained his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2000 and his International Master’s in Scientific Computing from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden in 2003. After completing his master’s degree Chris work at the United States Army Research Laboratory for 3 years in Maryland for Raytheon, as a High Performance Computing Application Analyst/User Support Specialist.
Prior to his arrival at Cardiff he spent the last 3 years at the College of William and Mary and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the High Performance Computing Application Analyst. Chris worked with undergraduates, post-graduates and faculty researchers in all areas of advance research computing software and visualization development.
Chris is an enthusiast of triathlons/cycling and British motorbikes.
Mr Huw Lynes
Mr. Huw Lynes is the System Administrator for the Advanced Research Computing Division.
He graduated from Cardiff University in 1999 with a BSc in Microbiology before starting a PhD in Molecular Biology at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre at Hammersmith Hospital. In 2001 he joined the film industry as System Administrator for the Moving Picture Company in Soho (London, UK), before rejoining Cardiff University in 2006 as a member of staff at the Welsh e-Science Centre, prior to his current role within ARCCA.
Outside of work, Huw is a keen skater and can often be found skating in Bute Park.
Dr. James Osborne
Dr. James Osborne is the Application Support Engineer for the Advanced Research Computing division at Cardiff University. He obtained his BSc in Computer Science from Hull University in 2001 and his PhD in Computer Science, also from Hull, in 2006 under the direction of Dr Helen Wright. Dr Osborne joined the Information Services division of Cardiff University in 2006 where he spent eighteen months as Project Manager of the Condor Project before taking up his present position in the Advanced Research Computing division in April 2007.
Dr Osborne's research interests include visualization, distributed computing, and computer science to support other scientific disciplines.
Dr. Hugh Beedie
Dr Hugh Beedie is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Information Services (INSRV) as well as ARCCA.
He has been working in Cardiff University for over 25 years, carrying out a range of technology related roles in the computing service, He was responsible for developing Cardiff's Local and Wide area networks from the early days of dumb terminals and no Internet, through to the more recent period of Gigabit ethernet networking and a ubiquitous Internet. Along with the development of the underlying network, he has also led the teams responsible for developing many workstation and server-based IT services for the entire campus.
He has been CTO of INSRV and ARCCA since September 2006, and since that time has been working on three main areas; the creation of ARCCA and the project for the ARCCA SRIF3-funded tender for HPC equipment, the University's Modern Working Environment (MWE) programme, and an energy saving programme for all IT services.
His major role as Technical Design Authority in the MWE Programme is to ensure that all University IT Services are designed to interoperate with maximum functionality and minimum complexity, according to well defined IT Standards.
His ARCCA responsibilities are to ensure that, although separate from INSRV, ARCCA's services will seamlessly integrate with those of INSRV. He has also played a major role in, and was the original INSRV sponsor of the Condor Compute service.
His energy saving remit is supported by his membership of the University's Energy Management initiative, and is being satisfied by technical workstation and server design changes, investigation and change of the cooling systems used in the University's data centres, and advice on purchasing policies and user education to minimise energy consumption of PCs.
INSRV Affiliates
Dr. Christopher Dickson
Dr. Chris Dickson has been coordinating the Advanced Research Computing (High-End Computing) programme at Cardiff University until October 2007, including the ARCCA website. In his new role within INSRV, Dr. Dickson will still be working on collaborative opportunities between INSRV and ARCCA.
He graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1989, before joining Cardiff University to complete his PhD in 1993. Dr Dickson worked for a commercial IT training firm in Cardiff (1994-96), and managed a high school library and resource centre (1996-97). He then rejoined the University in 1997 as an Information Officer and Computing Advisor for Information Services Directorate, before becoming Departmental IT Liaison Officer (2000-2003), and Liaison and Strategy Officer (2003-2004).
Dr. Dickson serves on the University Court and is a member of the University’s Social and Community Action Network (SCAN) Committee, which promotes links between staff working in different areas of the University and raises money for the Tenovus cancer charity and local good causes