Academic position, and
Director of CLUMEQ High Performance Computing Centre

McGill University

We are currently seeking applications for the academic Director of the CLUMEQ High Performance Computing Centre. The Director will be an academic member of staff, and a member of an academic Department. As such, we seek candidates with a proven record of excellence in research that utilizes high performance computing, and also the capacity for excellence in teaching. Candidates can be in any Department of any Faculty of McGill University. Candidates will be interviewed by their prospective Departments/Faculties, as well as by the search committee for the academic Director of the CLUMEQ Computer Centre. Information regarding the academic and research focus and vision of Departments and Faculties of the University can be found on their respective web sites. Information specific to the academic Directorship of CLUMEQ is as follows.

CLUMEQ is one of seven national Canadian High Performance Computing consortia funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. It is led by McGill University and includes Universite Laval and the Universite du Quebec system. It was established in 2001, and currently operates two sites: Montreal and Quebec City. The Quebec City site houses a 960 compute nodes Sun Constellation cluster with a total of 7680 cores, for a peak performance of 88 Tflops, and 500 TB of parallel storage. The Montreal site includes a 5,000 sq.ft. of IT surface with a 1200 node cluster currently being deployed. This system is rated at 130 Tflops (top 35 worldwide) and also features 2 PB of attached parallel storage. Both sites are connected via a dedicated 10 Gbps link, and provide computational resources to academic researchers from institutional members of CLUMEQ as well as across Canada. An expansion to double the computing capacity of the Montreal site is slated for 2011.

The Director is responsible for managing the operation of CLUMEQ, and setting the scientific and development agenda in support of the research mission of McGill University and other CLUMEQ partners. This includes a general oversight role in the development and expansion of major systems, a leadership role in promoting High Performance Computing efforts on campus and liaising with the rest of Canadian HPC community through Compute Canada. Further, the Director will work with stakeholders both in Quebec and California to pursue the development of a data center facility, and lead in the development of colocation policies that are suitable in both jurisdictions and consistent with the missions of the institutions involved. In detail, McGill University in partnership with the University of California at San Diego has undertaken the design of an ultra efficient data center for HPC applications to be based on McGill's MacDonald campus. The facility will serve to colocate HPC resources from Quebec and University of California system institutions. The design leverages the local climate in Quebec, and calls for a facility with no need for any mechanical cooling and novel ice storage technologies. In addition, the hydroelectric origin of electrical power in Quebec will lead to a substantial reduction in green house gas emissions compared to a similar operation in California, and to further savings related to any trading scheme that involves emission credits. As designed, this facility would set a record in terms of efficiency in the data center space.

Applicants should submit a detailed curriculum vitae and a statement of teaching interests as well as a research plan. Applicants should also submit a statement providing their vision of the future of advanced computing. They should arrange for three letters of reference to be sent directly to:

Review of applications will begin no later than 28 February 2011. The successful candidate will be supported by a generous start-up package.

McGill University is committed to equity in employment and diversity. It welcomes applications from indigenous peoples, visible minorities, ethnic minorities, persons with disabilities, women, persons of minority sexual orientations and gender identities and others who may contribute to further diversification. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.