, has been appointed as the first director of research computing at The University of Texas at El Paso.
The newly created position comes as the University begins to install hardware for its High Performance Computing Virtual Research Laboratory – for which Teller is the coordinator.
¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ also continues to take advantage of the University of Texas Research Cyberinfrastructure (UTRC) initiative – providing opportunities for high-performance computing, networking, data storage, education and training within the UT System.
"Dr. Teller's expertise and her ability to network at the national level are highly valued," said Roberto Osegueda, Ph.D., ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ's vice president of research. "With her leadership, ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ is now on a firm path to expand research and teaching opportunities and to keep pace with the rapidly changing high-performance computing technologies."
Teller is well-known in the high-performance computing world as an accomplished researcher and educator. The New York University graduate joined the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ faculty in 1997. She has attained about $7 million in research funds.
In addition, she garnered about $2 million in awards for high-performance computing infrastructure at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ, including a UT System 2004-05 Science and Technology Acquisition and Retention Award, and more than $2.5 million in awards targeted at the education, retention and advancement of students, in particular those from underrepresented populations.
Teller's appointment is another step along the University's path toward achieving Tier One research status. Combined, the UT System and ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ projects are designed to make available and promote the use of local and remote high-end research computing and storage for faculty, staff and students in all academic fields.
IBM's recent pledge of more than $90,000 in hardware and services for ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ's HPCVRL will create the foundation for the University's first research computing environment based on cloud computing and virtualization concepts.
"The idea is to use cloud and virtualization technologies, as well as parallel computing techniques, to enable researchers to remotely employ multiple processing elements simultaneously to solve a problem, reducing the time to solution," said Teller, a professor of at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ. "This is particularly important for complex research problems that can only be solved in a reasonable period of time using a multitude of processing elements."
As a member of the UTRC Faculty Outreach Working Group, Teller is the liaison between the UT System's initiative and ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ faculty. She will work to promote the use of UTRC and ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ resources to expand the scope of research at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ and enable collaborations across institutions.