University of Queensland Research Computing Centre (RCC) Chief Technology Officer Jake Carroll will replace Professor David Abramson as Director on 1 February 2024.
David is retiring from RCC after a decade as its Director and will become an Emeritus Professor in UQ’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from mid-2024.
“I am sad to be standing down as Director of RCC, but I certainly won’t be short of interesting and fun activities going forward,” said David.
“The RCC team has been superb, and we have really built something very special at UQ. I look forward to seeing RCC continue to grow under Jake’s leadership, and I have great confidence in him and the entire team. I am also looking forward to being Emeritus Professor in EECS and helping RCC from the sidelines.”
UQ Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research Infrastructure) Professor Paul (Bonno) Bonnington said: “I would like to take this opportunity to thank David for his tremendous contributions to UQ over the years. We will greatly miss David’s collaborative and consultative approach and wish him well for his future endeavours.
“I warmly congratulate Jake on his appointment as the Director, Research Computing Centre and look forward to working with him in the future,” said Bonno.
Jake said David's leadership, mentorship and camaraderie over many years have helped him “immensely.”
“He helped me find an interesting path in life that I might otherwise never have had. I want to continue what David started and the great capability we've built together,” said Jake.
“I look forward to working with our community to take all of this to amazing new places. It is a unique privilege to have been selected to take on this role and I am excited by what comes next.”
Before commencing at UQ in 2013, David held appointments at Griffith University, CSIRO, RMIT and Monash University.
Bonno said David “has made a remarkable contribution to UQ,” including the introduction and co-ordination of parallel computing.
“His significant efforts in computer architecture and application of high-performance computer systems used for cutting-edge research has impacted researchers in science and engineering, both nationally and internationally. His innovative approach has supported them in achieving excellence in their own disciplines,” said Bonno.
As RCC Director, David led the creation of the IBM@UQ Centre of Excellence & Innovation, a collaboration with IBM. This centre has provided many tangible benefits to UQ in collaborative teaching, research, and development, and it is unique in its goals and activities.
Throughout his career, David has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards, most recently the 2022 SCAsia HPC Visionary Award, 2021 IEEE/ACM Ken Kennedy Award, 2019 Australian Pearcey Hall of Fame Award, and the 2017 IEEE HPDC Achievement Award.
David is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), and the Australian Computer Society.
David is currently the President of Australasian eResearch Organisations (AeRO), a sector-wide association focused on eResearch in Australasia. He is also the President of CORE, the Australasian Computing Research and Education Association which incorporates Computer Science schools in Australia and New Zealand.
Over the course of his own career, Jake has become a globally-recognised leader in architecture, management and governance of large-scale scientific research computing and data storage infrastructure. He was a recipient of the UQ Award for Excellence in Innovation in 2018.
“Jake has tirelessly supported scientific researchers behind the scenes and at the coalface,” said Bonno.
“He has made continual technical contributions to the community at the local, state, national and international level and has held a diverse range of board appointments, such as the Queensland Government Inaugural Artificial Intelligence Committee and the International Data Storage Advisory Council.
Since 2009, Jake held various senior appointments at UQ including Associate Director Institutes Research Computing spanning three institutes: Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN).
Jake joined RCC as CTO in 2019 with a strategic focus: to bring advanced, scientific and research computing to every researcher that needed it, acting as the glue between this infrastructure and science, enabling accelerated research outcomes.
“His most recent contribution to our UQ research community is Bunya – UQ’s now nationally-recognised supercomputer that is improving the eResearch outcomes of more than 1,000 UQ researchers,” said Bonno.
“He believes in the democratisation of the advanced scientific computing resources that UQ has available to it and that every researcher should be able to benefit.
“Jake is committed to working collaboratively with the UQ research community, external stakeholders, the wider sector and our industry partners to provide trusted platforms that continue to elevate UQ’s research infrastructure to global excellence, delivering value to all researchers.”
