Katherine Yelick
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Katherine "Kathy" Anne Yelick, an American
computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
, is the vice chancellor for research and the Robert S. Pepper Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
. She is also a faculty scientist at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...
, where she was Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences from 2010–2019.


Education and scientific career

Katherine Yelick received her SB, SM, and
PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
, completing her thesis in 1990. She joined the faculty at the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
in 1991, and was appointed a joint-appointment faculty research scientist at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in the Berkeley Hills, hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established i ...
in 1996. She has done research across a broad range of computing sciences:
high performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...
,
systems programming Systems programming, or system programming, is the activity of programming computer system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims t ...
,
parallel algorithm In computer science, a parallel algorithm, as opposed to a traditional serial algorithm, is an algorithm which can do multiple operations in a given time. It has been a tradition of computer science to describe serial algorithms in abstract mach ...
s, and
computational genomics Computational genomics refers to the use of computational and statistical analysis to decipher biology from genome sequences and related data, including both DNA and RNA sequence as well as other "post-genomic" data (i.e., experimental data obtained ...
. Yelick is known for her work in
partitioned global address space In computer science, partitioned global address space (PGAS) is a parallel programming model paradigm. PGAS is typified by communication operations involving a global memory address space abstraction that is logically partitioned, where a portion ...
programming languages, including co-inventing the
Unified Parallel C Unified Parallel C (UPC) is an extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines, including those with a common global address space ( SMP and NUMA) and those with distributed me ...
(UPC) and Titanium languages. She was a co-author of the first book to explain the language Unified Parallel C and its use. She also led the Sparsity project, the first automatically tuned library for
sparse matrix In numerical analysis and scientific computing, a sparse matrix or sparse array is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero. There is no strict definition regarding the proportion of zero-value elements for a matrix to qualify as sparse ...
kernels, and she co-led the development of the Optimized Sparse Kernel Interface (OSKI).


Academic and Research Leadership

Yelick served from 2008 to 2012 as the director of the
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) is a high-performance computing (supercomputer) research facility that was founded in 1974. The National User Facility is operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for th ...
(NERSC), the scientific computing center that provides high-performance computing facilities and associated expertise to over 9,000 scientists supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. In 2010, she was appointed the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at
Berkeley Lab Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL, Berkeley Lab) is a federally funded research and development center in the hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established in 1931 by the University of California (UC), the laboratory is spo ...
, overseeing NERSC, the high-speed research network
Energy Sciences Network The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) is a high-speed computer network serving United States Department of Energy (DOE) scientists and their collaborators worldwide. It is managed by staff at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. More than ...
(ESnet), and the Computing Research Division. In this role she managed an organization with a research budget of about $150 million. In her role as associate laboratory director, Yelick led the development of the 2019 Computing Sciences Strategic Plan for Berkeley Lab. In the introduction to that plan, she said: She also led a major initiative, Machine Learning (ML) for Science, in which researchers developed advanced machine learning tools to accelerate discovery in a wide range of scientific disciplines. In 2021, Yelick delivered the inaugural lecture in the distinguished lecture series at the Harvard Institute for Applied Computational Science, with the title "Machine Learning in Science: Applications, Algorithms, and Architectures." Since 2021, Yelick has served as the vice chancellor for research (VCR) at the University of California, Berkeley. In this role, she provides the primary leadership in research policy, planning, and administration, and also leads university-industry relations, research compliance, research communications, and federal research development. The VCR supervises over fifty campus research units, twelve research museums and remote field stations, and the research administration offices. The research enterprise at UC Berkeley attracted $871 million in extramural support in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022.


Awards and honors

From 2012 to 2015, Yelick received three awards from the
Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...
(ACM). *2012: She was named as an
ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...
"for ercontributions to parallel computing languages that have been used in both the research community and in production environments." *2013: She received the ACM-W Athena Lecturer award at SC13 "for her contributions to parallel programming languages that improve programmer productivity." *2015 She received the ACM Ken Kennedy Award "for advancing the programmability of HPC systems, strategic national leadership, and mentorship in academia and government labs." In 2017 Yelick was elected to both the
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...
and to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
. The NAE award was "for software innovation and leadership in high-performance computing." The American Academy citation said that "her research enables use of new high-performance architectures and eases programming of applications with irregular communication patterns." The following year she was elected as a fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
. At the 2019 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference SC19 Yelick was honored by HPCwire as their Editor’s Choice for Outstanding Leadership in HPC.


National service

Yelick serves on the executive committee for the Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences of the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), also known as the National Academies, is a Congressional charter, congressionally chartered organization that serves as the collective scientific national academy of the Uni ...
(NASEM). This Division provides independent and authoritative advice to the federal government and the nation on important science and technology policy issues in the areas of national security, space and aerospace, energy, infrastructure, manufacturing, materials, physics, astronomy, mathematics and operations research, information technology, and telecommunications. Yelick is the chair of the NASEM study committee on ''Post-Exascale Computing for the National Nuclear Security Administration''. Congress requested this study in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, charging it with "reviewing the future of computing beyond exascale computing to meet national security needs at the National Nuclear Security Administration."


Personal life

Yelick is married to
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...
James Demmel, who is also an
ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...
and works in
computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...
and
numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathemati ...
..


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yelick, Katherine A. Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists American women academic administrators UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty MIT School of Engineering alumni 2012 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 21st-century American women Year of birth missing (living people)