People

0.1 Associate Chief Research Information Officer / Director of the Center for Advanced Research Computing

Byoung-Do (BD) Kim

BD joined USC’s Information Technology Services (ITS) in August 2019 to lead the Center for Advanced Research Computing, then called the High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC). He received his PhD in aeronautics and astronautics engineering from Purdue University and has been working in high-performance computing and big data fields for more than 15 years. Prior to joining USC, he worked at many national institutions, such as the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) as a computational scientist and programmer, and led advanced research computing programs at multiple R1 universities, including Harvard Medical School and Virginia Tech.

BD’s research interests are large-scale application optimization, parallel computational models, and computational fluid dynamics. Recently, his focus has been extended to data-intensive computing and advanced system design for computation and data convergence models. He always looks for opportunities where the USC CARC team can maximize the potential of computational and data-enabled research by providing expertise in advanced computing and big data analysis.

0.2 Systems Engineering & Infrastructure

The Systems Engineering & Infrastructure team oversees the installation and maintenance of CARC’s computing resources, including Discovery, CARC’s high-performance computing cluster.

Bill Jendrzejek, HPC Systems Team Lead

Bill has been working in high-performance computing at USC since 2011, specializing in server administration and high-speed networking. During his time at CARC, he has helped develop the Discovery and Endeavour clusters and migrate researchers to them.

Jimi Chu, Senior Systems Architect

Jimi finished his Ph.D. and postdoc in computational condensed matter physics. He left academia in 2014 and has since shifted focus to supporting scientific research by designing and building high-performance computing, storage, and network systems.

Siddhesh Singh, HPC Engineer

Siddhesh has a background in high-performance computing and joined USC in July 2022. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Houston where he conducted research on parallel computing and parallel I/O. His work focuses on maintaining and upgrading CARC cluster computing resources.

0.3 Research Facilitation & Applications

The Research Facilitation & Applications team enhances research computing at USC through education, general user support, and collaborative research partnerships.

Cesar Sul, Research Computing Associate

Cesar has a background in computational physics and received his MS in Physics from San Jose State University. His research focused on testing the orbital stability of extrasolar planets by simulating them on an HPC cluster. He now works with USC researchers to get the most they can out of CARC resources. His current areas of expertise include Python, building software from source, building computational workflows, and data management.

Marco Olguin, Computational Scientist

Marco is a Computational Scientist at USC CARC specializing in atomistic simulations and exascale computing. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computational Science from the University of Texas at El Paso. He works on code performance analysis and tuning of massively parallelized applications. He performs research in materials science with a main focus on energy storage systems, such as Li-ion batteries.

Iman Rahbari, Computational Scientist

Iman joined USC in November 2021 as a Computational Scientist. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University working on high-fidelity numerical simulation of high-speed turbulent flows. Prior to joining CARC, he was a Research Scientist at Purdue Experimental Turbine Aerothermal Lab (PETAL) focusing on the integration of numerical and experimental studies. Iman’s research interests are cloud computing, data analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and physics-informed machine learning.

Derek Strong, Research Computing Facilitator

Derek received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His background includes research in economics and innovation studies. His interests include statistical computing, data management, analysis, and visualization, Julia, Python, and R programming, research software development, and open science.

Tomasz (Tomek) Osinski, Research Computing Facilitator in Life Science

Before joining the USC CARC team in 2021, Tomek accumulated over 15 years of experience in Structural Bioinformatics, Cryo-Electron Microscopy, and Research Computing Facilitation at the University of Virginia. For his Ph.D. project, completed in 2016, he analyzed the surfaces of interfaces formed between molecular complexes of allergens and antibodies. Additionally, Tomek built and maintained the hardware and software for hosting several websites and databases related to the Structural Genomics Project. After joining USC CARC, Tomek’s primary focus was to facilitate Cryo-EM data processing in an HPC environment. Thanks to the well-coordinated team’s efforts, this task was a success. Currently, Tomek is involved in several CARC projects and is passionate about leveraging AI advancements to provide better services for the USC scientific community.

Hao Ji, Data Scientist

Hao received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from USC in 2021 and holds a Master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley. His work includes collaborating with researchers on data science–related projects, teaching classes, and developing workshops. His research focuses on reinforcement learning, high-performance computing, large language models and AI-driven system optimization.

0.4 Cloud Computing & DevOps

The Cloud Computing & DevOps team leads the development and maintenance of CARC’s website and CARC user portal, as well as the development of the private cloud computing platform and the CARC OnDemand service.

James Hong, Cloud Computing Solution Architect

James has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of California Los Angeles. He has been with CARC since 2020 and with USC since 2004. James was an important member of the Cryo-EM team where he designed custom solutions to automate delivery and pre-processing of data from two cryogenic electron microscopy instruments, including integration with Slack as a means to view pre-processed images from the microscopes in near real-time. He currently holds the position of administrator for ColdFront and OpenNebula.

Nikole To, Cloud Engineer

Nikole started working for USC ITS in January 1997. She worked in the Customer Support Center for 5 years then as an Unix/Linux Systems administrator for 20 years. She joined the CARC team in September 2022 as a Cloud Engineer. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Information Systems from California State University, Los Angeles and a Master’s Degree in Project Management from University of Southern California. In her spare time, she enjoys latin ballroom dancing (ie. Salsa and Bachata), riding her bicycle, and going on vegan foodie adventures.

Bill Sun, Full Stack Developer

Bill joined the CARC team in July of 2021 as a Full Stack Senior Software Engineer. Prior to that, he worked at the Enterprise Application and Services side of USC for 15 years, creating technologies to help every student through their academic careers at USC, including applications, admissions, class enrollment, and graduation. Bill holds a Master of Business Administration degree from USC Marshall School of Business. Professionally, he is an autodidact when it comes to technology and software engineering.

0.5 Communications & Outreach

Communications and Outreach support CARC through originating comprehensive documentation, organizing USC campus events, and announcing important updates and information.

Dani Cannella, Manager of Research Partnership & Business Development

Dani joined the CARC team in March 2022 after receiving her Bachelor’s Degree in Linguistics from the University at Buffalo. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Human Language Technology at the University of Arizona. Her passion for semantics, language accessibility, and understanding ambiguity, as well as a background in computer science, give her the edge she needs to excel in creating digestible end-user content for highly technical topics. Outside of work, her hobbies include playing video games, traveling the world, and reading endless books.