Merle Giles
Director, Private Sector Program, National Center for Supercomputing Applications |
Merle Giles is Director of the Private Sector Program (PSP) at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). NCSA is one of the five original centers in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Supercomputer Centers Program, opening its doors in January 1986.
NCSA has contributed significantly to the birth and growth of worldwide cyberinfrastructure for science and engineering, operating some of the world's most powerful supercomputers and developing the software needed to efficiently use these systems. NCSA teams were the first to develop software to master cluster computing, leading to today’s most-used high-performance computing (HPC) architecture. NCSA developed NCSA Mosaic™, the foundational software for Netscape® and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer®. In 2007, NCSA was selected to build the nation’s first NSF-funded petascale computing system, seeking to achieve at least one sustainable petascale floating point operation per second (petaflop/s).
Industry can engage intellectually with applied and theoretical researchers, leverage today’s technological innovations and access NCSA’s leadership class computational systems. The world’s leading companies have profited tremendously by decreasing time-to-solution and increasing the fidelity of their most complex science, engineering and mathematical problems. PSP partners can soon leverage HPC resources at scales many times that of today’s capabilities, seeking breakthrough solutions and sustainable competitive advantage in their industry domains.
Giles brings more than 30 years’ business experience to NCSA. He led UIUC’s Executive MBA to international stature, achieving a #1 ranking among US public university EMBA programs in London’s 2002 FINANCIAL TIMES. As Executive MBA director, he and teams of executives and faculty consulted at major international companies, including BASF, Bertelsmann, Caterpillar, Deere, Disney, Deutsche Telekom, Lufthansa, Porsche, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Volkswagen and others. Giles earlier served as president and CEO of Sheridan Bank of Peoria IL (later First of America Bank-Peoria), as CFO of Star Transport, Inc. (a Morton IL transportation company serving the eastern one-half of the United States) and as a real estate broker/owner.
Giles earned an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BS in accounting and business administration from Illinois State University. He is an alumnus of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking at the University of Delaware and holds a CPA certificate.
NCSA’s partners include: ACNielsen, Boeing, Caterpillar, DOW Chemical, John Deere, Digital Ribbon, ExxonMobil, IBM, Innerlink, Intel, JPMorgan, L&L Products, Microsoft, Motorola, Rolls-Royce Engines and State Farm. Partnerships are available for companies of any size, from entrepreneurial start-ups to the world’s largest corporations. |
