Chaffin, Pummill Named Interim Co-Directors of Arkansas High Performance Computing Center

Photo by Russell Cothren

Jeff Pummill (left) and David J. Chaffin

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – David J. Chaffin and Jeff Pummill have been named interim co-directors of the Arkansas High Performing Computer Center at the University of Arkansas.

The Arkansas High Performance Computing Center’s mission is to meet the computational needs of the U of A community, either on campus or with supercomputers at other sites. The center supports research in about 30 academic areas across the campus, including computer science, integrated nanoscience, computational chemistry, computational biomagnetics, materials science and spatial science, among others.

Pummill, the center’s manager of cyberinfrastructure enablement, has supported high performance computing activities at the University of Arkansas since 2005. Chaffin joined the center in 2009 as associate director for high performance computing operations and user support and is a research assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Jim Rankin, vice provost for research and economic development, said the center continues to be a research asset as the University of Arkansas strives to become one of the top 50 research universities in the United States within the next decade.

“The Arkansas High Performance Computing Center is a vital resource for our faculty and staff and it is in good hands under the interim leadership of Jeff Pummill and David Chaffin,” Rankin said.

Pummill and Chaffin are among the approximately 240 authorities on high-performance computing who have been designated “campus champions” by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, a collection of U.S. facilities that scientists can use to interactively share computing resources, data and expertise.

The collected facilities, known as XSEDE, are supported by the National Science Foundation and offer researchers access to a network of 16 supercomputers and high-end visualization and data analysis resources across the country.

Pummill, who has more than a decade of experience in managing high-performance computing resources, was one of the original campus champions. XSEDE initiated the Campus Champions Program in 2008 to provide a network that facilitates high-performance computing education and training opportunities for researchers, faculty, students and staff.

Pummill became one of the original XSEDE campus champions. A key advantage to the campus champions’ extolling XSEDE’s virtues is that it breaks down silos by encouraging networking and communication between members, he said.

He is now the coordinator and architect of the XSEDE regional champions project, which will enable and extend research collaboration and support among research computing specialists nationally. His involvement with the campus champions network has raised the profile of the University of Arkansas among the nation’s high-performance computing community, he said.

Pummill said, “It is very common now to be at a large national conference and someone will ask, ‘Where is Arkansas on this?’ We’re part of the standard conversation of the national supercomputing environment and we’re moving into the international environment.”

Chaffin is a graduate of the University of Tennessee, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in engineering science.

Chaffin has specialized in computational engineering and fluid dynamics for 35 years, high-performance computing programming for 25 years, and high-performance computing system management for the last 15 years at the Tennessee Valley Authority, University of Tennessee, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Texas Tech University and the University of Arkansas.