Current World Leader in High-Performance Computing Joins University's Computational and Mechanical Engineering Team
Professor George Biros
The computational engineer who led the group that designed and deployed one of the world's most advanced technologies for blood flow simulation, has joined the faculty of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) at The University of Texas at Austin (UT).
George Biros will teach and conduct research in supercomputing technology's application to biophysical and medical image analysis problems and further develop the mathematical underpinnings for many grand challenge simulation problems.
As a two-time winner of the Gordon Bell Prize, Biros is widely considered the current international leader for developing massively parallel simulations that run on the most powerful high-performance computing platforms available today. Last year he led a team of researchers creating a simulation of blood flow that won the 2010 Gordon Bell Prize for the world's fastest supercomputing application. Annually awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery, the prize is considered the computation industry's pinnacle achievement each year. It was the second time he earned the award.
The Gordon Bell Prize
George Biros is the leading authority worldwide on high-performance computing algorithms for large scale simulations in biomedicine, particularly for breakthrough models of blood flow.
His unique contributions in applied mathematics, in parallel computing algorithms, and in the development of intricate models of blood flow physics and physiology has already had a significant impact in computational biomedicine and extended our knowledge of how red blood cells behave in living subjects.
We are delighted to have him join the faculty of the University of Texas and the family of computational scientists and engineers in the core faculty of ICES.
- Dr. Tinsley Oden, associate vice president for research and director of ICES
Biros' work for the 2010 Gordon Bell prize simulated 260 million deformable red blood cells flowing in plasma. The mathematical and computational infrastructure for such high-fidelity direct numerical simulations of blood will enable scientists and engineers to better understand transport and aggregation phenomena in blood flow like clotting, damage, and drug transport.
In 2004, Biros also received the Gordon Bell prize, designed to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing and track the development of the relatively new discipline of supercomputing. That project, led by Dr. Omar Ghattas, a UT professor of mechanical engineering and geological sciences, aimed to perform three-dimensional full waveform inversion for global seismology and earthquake engineering.
Migration to The University of Texas at Austin
UT is well known for being a leader in computational sciences and engineering and is host to one of the top supercomputing centers in the world, the Texas Advanced Computing Center. With stellar programs in engineering, computer science, and mathematics, it is only natural that UT attracts the brightest faculty and students. Based on the caliber of UT's academics, faculty and students, programs, and resources, UT is an ideal fit for my teaching and research interests.
UT is also well-known to have a devoted and loyal network of supporters consisting of UT grads and non-grads alike. I'm grateful to W.A. "Tex" Moncrief and the anonymous donors who have so kindly provided financial support for my teaching and research endeavors. I am honored to be joining such an outstanding academic community and I look forward to becoming a productive and contributing member of the UT family.
- Professor George Biros
Education and Work History
Biros' work focuses on medical imaging and bringing new computational tools into the clinical setting. In parallel and scientific computing, he develops new architectures and programming languages for massive datasets.
During his brief professional career, he also received a 2005 Early Career Young Investigator Award from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop parallel algorithms for inverse problems of systems governed by partial differential equations.
Biros comes from Georgia Institute of Technology where he was an associate professor in computational science and engineering, and biomedical engineering. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2006, he was an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics, bioengineering, and computer and information sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined Penn in 2003 after serving as a postdoctoral associate at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. He completed his doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University in 2000.
Biros, a professor of mechanical engineering, will hold one of the newly endowed chairs created to attract computational engineers, the W. A. "Tex" Moncrief, Jr. Simulation-Based Engineering Science Chair. He and Michael Sacks, another new ICES core faculty member and professor of biomedical engineering, are the first hires resulting from the Moncrief Faculty Program.
W. A. "Tex" Moncrief and an anonymous donor established the program to recruit outstanding faculty dedicated to research and teaching in computational engineering and science. The program targets the world class scholars with an exceptional track record in interdisciplinary research at the intersection of advanced mathematical and computational techniques and target scientific and engineering problems.
About ICES
ICES is a teaching and research unit at the university offering a graduate degree program, an undergraduate certification and internship program, and 18 research programs in computational engineering and sciences. To lead the nation's interdisciplinary initiative, ICES draws faculty from 17 academic departments. The institute offers the university community more than 50 seminars each year, and has hosted more than 500 scholars from around the world.
For more information, contact: Becky Rische, Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES) 512-232-5784 or
