Mateo Valero, director of Barcelona Supercomputing Center, has been recognised with the Distinguished Service Award given by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM).
Mateo Valero, director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center , has been recognised with the Distinguished Service Award given by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). The award recognises Valero’s leadership of initiatives in high-performance computing research and education, including the HiPEAC European Network of Excellence and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS).
The awards ceremony took place in San Francisco on Saturday 15 June. The award is on the basis of “the value and degree of services to the computing community” and it is one of the most internationally prestigious in the computing field. The ACM has distinguished Valero for being a firm advocate for the advancement of computer architecture and high-performance computing research, and in nurturing others to pursue these research fields.
Valero has worked on many fronts: making a strategic case for major funding initiatives at the regional, national and EU levels; serving as a founding coordinator of HiPEAC, a European Network of Excellence in the area of high-performance and embedded computing systems that involves more than 800 European researchers; ensuring that such initiatives benefit science research more broadly; fostering academic-industry cooperation; and hosting numerous visitors and conferences in the region of his institution, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya – Barcelona Tech.
Initiatives in which Valero has played a leading role include: the European Center for Parallelism of Barcelona (CEPBA, 1990), the Catalan Center for Computation and Communications (1995-2000), the CEPBA-IBM Research Institute (CIRI, 2000-2004) and the BCN-CNS. The last of these hosts the MareNostrum supercomputer, which is a national treasure that serves scientific and industrial users and has a worldwide reputation.
With the awards, the ACM wants to recognise the achievements of scientists devoted to computing who have contributed to elevate the role of this discipline as an essential tool to push technological innovation forward.
This year’s edition has also recognised Fabrizio Gagliardi, of Microsoft Research, with a Presidential Award. Gagliardi, as the chair of ACM Europe Council, has sharpened ACM’s visibility and its professional and educational activities throughout Europe. He also played a leading role in creating the first Heidelberg Laureate Forum, a collaborative initiative between the computing and math disciplines to bring young researchers together with winners of the highest scientific awards, including the ACM Turing Award.
About ACM
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field’s challenges. ACM strengthens the computing profession’s collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence.ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.