Dr. Edward Seidel

Assistant Director, Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, National Science Foundation

Biography

Edward Seidel is a physicist recognized for his work on numerical relativity and black holes, as well as in high-performance and grid computing. He earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in relativistic astrophysics. He was a professor at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert-Einstein-Institute, or AEI) in Germany from 1996-2003. There, Seidel founded and led AEI's numerical relativity and e-science groups, which became leaders in solving Einstein's equations using large-scale computers, and in distributed and grid computing. He also was a senior research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and associate professor in the Physics Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

In 2003, Louisiana State University recruited Seidel to lead its investment in the Governor's Information Technology Initiative, and he became founding director of LSU's Center for Computation & Technology. Seidel served as CCT director from 2003-2008. Seidel also is the Floating Point Systems Professor in LSU's Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Computer Science. In addition to leading the CCT, he helped initiate, and was the chief scientist for, the $40M Louisiana Optical Network Initiative. He is a recipient of the IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award, the Gordon Bell Prize, and Heinz-Billing Prize, and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

In June 2008, the National Science Foundation selected Seidel as its director for the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI). He began this position Sept. 1, 2008, in which he oversees advances in supercomputing, high-speed networking, data storage and software development on a national level. He has recently assumed the role of Assistant Director for Mathematics and Physical Sciences at NSF.