This academic year 2023 EVL alum Mike Papka has joined UIC’s Department of Computer Science and EVL faculty as a professor, bringing years of expertise in high performance computing to campus. For nearly three decades, Papka has held the position of Research Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory contributing to research in high performance computing, scientific visualization of large and complex datasets, information visualization related to high-performance computing, virtual reality for science and the integration of edge services.

Since 2006, he’s served as Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) Directorate, providing strategic planning and management of the Laboratory Directorate comprising Biosciences, Computational Science, Data Science and Learning, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, a joint institute with Northwestern University, and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. In his role, Papka aids in executing a research program that aims to couple computing-related activities with several science domains whose future is tied to progress in computing.

For the last 12 years, Papka has served and continues to serve as Division Director at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). He is responsible for planning and executing facility upgrades and integrated data strategies, risk assessment and management, operations reporting and reviews, staff promotion and retention, and safety. The ALCF is home to some of the world’s fastest supercomputers: Theta; a Cray XC40 supercomputer based on Intel’s Xeon Phi KNL processor and NVIDIA DGX-3, Polaris; a HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10+ based on AMD Milan processor and NVIDIA A100s, and Aurora; a Intel CPU/GPU system currently being installed that support scientific and engineering open science research.

We welcome Mike’s return to UIC and EVL! He undoubtedly will be a valued asset to our research and educational enterprise.