James Barr von Oehsen has been selected the director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), a joint research center of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh, and concurrently, the vice chancellor for research computing at Pitt effective May 1, 2023. He will also hold appointments on the research faculty of Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Pitt’s Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Informatics.
A leader in the field of cyberinfrastructure, von Oehsen comes from Rutgers University, where he served as associate vice president for the Office of Advanced Research Computing. There he provided strategic leadership that propelled the university’s research and scholarly achievements through next-generation computing, networking and data science, and he developed and executed a cyberinfrastructure strategy, centralizing research computing.
"His breadth of experience with cyberinfrastructure that supports scientific research will make him an excellent leader to continue and advance PSC’s legacy in high performance computing, and Pitt’s commitment to support research computing comprehensively across the full spectrum of scholarly activities, from digital arts and humanities, to STEM, to clinical and health science users," said Rob A. Rutenbar, senior vice chancellor for research.