Dear Colleagues,
As you may already know, after nine impactful years of leadership at NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Professor Bill Gropp, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, will step down at the end of 2025. I am pleased to announce that Professor Rayadurgam Srikant will serve as NCSA’s next director, effective January 1st.
Srikant, Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, brings a wealth of experience to his upcoming role to oversee NCSA, a nationally known treasure at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has served as acting director of the Coordinated Science Lab, a co-Director of the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute that is managed alongside Berkeley, as well as a long-term resident of Coordinated Science Lab. His research interests include machine learning, networks, and cloud computing.
Srikant has deep ties to Illinois, holding doctorate and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, as well as a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He also steps into this role with a strong foundation of partnerships at NCSA, having served as its Acting Director of Operations for several months in 2023. I am confident that Srikant’s expertise and collaborative approach will be invaluable at NCSA.
I want to express my deep gratitude to Bill for his leadership at NCSA over the past nine years. Over this period, NCSA has strengthened partnerships across campus, diversified its research areas and expertise, led in providing AI computing resources for NSF, and launched efforts such as Illinois Computes to democratize computing for all. (You can read more about Bill’s incredible impact here.)
As we look forward to celebrating NCSA’s 40th anniversary next year, I know that Bill’s past leadership and Srikant’s vision for what’s ahead will propel us into another 40 years of innovation in AI, machine learning, and other accelerating areas in the research landscape for computing. Please join me in thanking Bill and congratulating Srikant on his new role.
Sincerely,
Susan A. Martinis
Senior Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation
Stephen G. Sligar Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Professor of Biochemistry