Leadership
H. Birali Runesha
Associate Vice President for Research Computing
Director of the Research Computing Center
Phone: 773.702.5977 | Fax: 773.834.9199 | runesha@uchicago.edu
As associate vice president for research computing and director of the Research Computing Center, Dr. Hakizumwami Birali Runesha provides leadership and vision for advancing all aspects of research computing strategies at the University. He is responsible for the design, configuration, and administration of the centrally managed high-performance computing (HPC) systems and related services across the University of Chicago. In addition, he provides access to advanced technical expertise, user support, advice, and training to the research community.
Dr. Runesha is a seasoned professional who brings to the University of Chicago HPC management leadership and more than 20 years of experience in high-performance computing and scientific software development. He earned his MS and Ph.D. in civil engineering at Old Dominion University. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he served as director of scientific computing and applications at the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI), managing the scientific computing, biological computing, visualization, and application development groups. In addition to overseeing the strategic planning of HPC resources and leading the annual procurement of supercomputing resources at MSI, Dr. Runesha created the MSI Application software development group and the MSI Scientific Data Management Laboratory to meet the evolving data management and database development needs of university researchers.
Dr. Runesha has developed open-source software programs and fast parallel solvers for large-scale finite element applications. He served as principal investigator on a number of research grants and is the author of many journal articles, proceedings, and conference papers. He has given many invited talks, seminars, courses, and workshops on various HPC topics.
Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, Dr. Runesha was a research scholar at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology developing parallel computing algorithms for engineering applications, a research associate for the Multidisciplinary Parallel-Vector Computer Center at Old Dominion University, and an assistant professor at the University of Kinshasa.
Kathy Bauman
Assistant Director for Project Management
kbauman@uchicago.edu
Kathy is the Assistant Director for Project Management for the Research Computing Center (RCC). Her responsibilities include managing RCC projects, programs, and new initiatives as well as partnering with stakeholders, faculty, and partners to cooperatively meet quality and timeline goals. She also works with RCC leadership to strategize, develop, and implement policy, process, and project quality improvements.
Kathy has extensive experience in data and software quality management; having successfully led comprehensive operational processes, and data and product quality management initiatives. Prior to joining the RCC, Kathy held several leadership roles, including as Director of Quality Assurance and Manager of Data Quality Control for marketing organizations focused on high-volume digital content management for a wide range of retail clients. Kathy earned her bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University and is a Certified Scrum Master through the Scrum Alliance.
Kimberly Grasch
Associate Director - Administration & Faculty Programs
Phone: 773.702.0159 | kgrasch@uchicago.edu
Kim is the associate director of administration and faculty programs for the Research Computing Center (RCC). She is responsible for allocating and authorizing expenses, processing payments, procurement, and budget reconciliations. Kim also serves as a human resource generalist for the department, including recruiting staff and student employees.
Kim has more than eight years of experience in non-profit management in the areas of finance, human resources, and event planning. Prior to joining the RCC in 2015, Kim worked for Alumni Relations and Human Resource Services at the University. She has a master’s degree in Human Resource Development from Indiana State University.
Administration
Zac Kettering
Administrative Assistant and Department Coordinator
zkettering@uchicago.edu
Zac is the Administrative Assistant and Department Coordinator for the Research Computing Center (RCC). His responsibilities include providing specialized business support for routine office and location support activities as well as identifying, enhancing, and following specific processes and procedures to maximize the efficiencies for which the support is being provided by working autonomously within established procedures and practices. He ensures the correct functioning of facilities, office, and/or business support services.
Zac served for nearly a decade in the United States Air Force as an Operations Intelligence Analyst with a specialization in applied communications, research, and time-sensitive reporting. Prior to joining the RCC, Zac worked in several industries ranging from SEO Marketing to Non-Profit Housing Services, where he brought a level of professional organization and military efficiency to his roles. Zac is currently working on his bachelor’s degree in Urban Planning and is a certified Mission Intelligence Coordinator and First Aid Instructor through the United States Air Force.
Application Development
Daniel Blandes
Software Developer
longbowou@uchicago.edu
Daniel Blandes is an Application Software Developer who recently joined the Research Computing Center (RCC) at the University of Chicago. With over six years of experience in software development, Daniel has worked on creating and enhancing applications that support various organizational needs. He has a strong background in collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver solutions that align with both technical goals and business objectives.
At the RCC, Daniel is enthusiastic about contributing to projects that assist faculty and researchers in advancing their work. He is committed to developing and maintaining applications that are reliable, user-friendly, and tailored to the research community's requirements. Daniel looks forward to supporting the RCC's mission of providing comprehensive computing resources and services to the University of Chicago's research community.
Computational Scientists
Hamid Dashti
Computational Scientist - GIS
hdashti@uchicago.edu
Hamid is a computational scientist specializing in geospatial data processing. He earned his PhD in Geosciences from Boise State University in Idaho, and then pursued postdoctoral research at both the University of Arizona and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work integrates remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), Earth system modeling, integrated assessment modeling, and data analytics to explore the complex intersection of global climate, natural systems, and human interactions.
Hamid has extensive expertise in processing remote sensing data, including multispectral, hyperspectral, and lidar data, and solar-induced fluorescence. His proficiency extends to running large-scale models and processing their outputs such as land surface models, Earth system models, and dynamic global vegetation models, while also incorporating AI techniques for geospatial data analysis. At the RCC, he is particularly interested in leveraging RCC resources in collaboration with various research teams across campus to scale geospatial analyses across diverse applications, such as GIS, remote sensing, climate change, environmental sciences, archaeology, and geography.
Akhil Francis
Computational Scientist - Quantum Science
afrancis2@uchicago.edu
Akhil Francis is a computational scientist for quantum sciences at the Research Computing Center. He supports faculty, researchers, and students at the University of Chicago in quantum science-related topics such as quantum computation and information. His area of expertise is in quantum computation, especially in quantum algorithms and applications. He is interested in working and collaborating on various aspects of quantum computation.
Akhil earned his Ph.D. in Physics from North Carolina State University. He further worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During his Ph.D. he used quantum computation to study condensed matter systems. He has also experience in benchmarking quantum computers. Further in his postdoctoral work, he used quantum computation to study quantum chemistry systems and optimization related problems. Additionally, he has worked on co-designing quantum algorithms with control hardware.
Bailey Howell
Research Data Scientist and Service Delivery Manager
bkhowell@uchicago.edu
Bailey is a Research Data Scientist with a background in computational biology, specializing in evolution and ecology. Her Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Virginia Tech focused on developing computational pipelines to predict species invasion probabilities and urban tolerances. Her dissertation work involved integrating information from diverse data sources, including images, geospatial data, and publicly available trait databases, into predictive modeling frameworks.
She has developed pipelines that use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) to extract features from image data. She has also worked on various projects using methods such as statistical modeling, geometric morphometrics, and phylogenetic comparative methods to study aspects of species evolution and ecology.
During her time at Virginia Tech, she created an undergraduate mentorship program and mentored students. She is committed to continuing this dedication to teaching and mentorship at UChicago. She is also eager to contribute to the research community by providing technical support to students, faculty, and staff to meet their diverse teaching and research needs.
Ross Hyman
Grant Solutions Architect
rhyman@uchicago.edu
Ross is a grant solutions architect for the Research Computing Center. He works closely with faculty to identify, develop, and implement computational, data science, and machine learning methods that advance their research. He assists faculty with grant preparation and editing, focusing on technical solutions.
Ross earned a Ph.D. in physics from Indiana University under Steve Girvin and did a postdoc in physics at Georgia Tech under Andy Zangwill. He has published in journals as varied as Physical Review Letters, American Journal of Physics, American Mathematical Monthly, and Tikkun on topics ranging from quantum phase transitions, magnetic thin films, density functional theory, the finite difference time domain method, bias in congressional apportionment, and social justice. He spent many years as a corporate researcher and writer for the AFL-CIO and has been a community organizer, science teacher, patent analyst, and data scientist.
Aleksandr Lykhin
Computational Scientist – Data Security Engineer
lykhin@uchicago.edu
Aleksandr is a computational scientist with expertise in molecular modeling, electronic structure theory, and chemical kinetics/dynamics simulation. He supports computational research that requires high-security standards and delivers software solutions designed to comply with secure computing environments available at the Secure Data Enclave.
Before joining the RCC, Aleksandr received his Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry from the University of Nevada, Reno. He then conducted his postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and later at the University of Chicago, focusing on developing quantum chemistry tools for predicting molecular properties using classical and hybrid quantum-classical computing algorithms.
Ashwini Naik
Computational Scientist – Image Analysis and Data Visualization
agnaik@uchicago.edu
Ashwini Naik is a Computational Scientist - Image Analysis and Data Visualization with expertise in Visual Data Science, Immersive Analytics, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and Spatial Computing. She earned both her Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago, focusing on advanced visualization techniques and visual analytics, gaming, and animation.
With several years of industry experience, Ashwini has held various roles, including Software Engineer, Test Engineer, Automation Engineer, and Consultant. She has also mentored junior engineers and built teams from the ground up, showcasing her leadership and team-building skills. Throughout her academic career, she has conducted extensive research on analyzing and visualizing complex multivariate datasets in 2D, as well as mixed and virtual reality environments.
Ashwini is dedicated to creating immersive and interactive solutions that enhance the understanding and dissemination of data, thereby driving innovation and improving decision-making processes.
Trung Nguyen
Senior Computational Scientist – Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
ndtrung@uchicago.edu
Trung is a senior computational scientist with expertise in molecular modeling, soft matter physics and high-performance computing. He supports computational research at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, developing and optimizing open-source software packages on current and new hardware architectures at the university.
Trung obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Scientific Computing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2011. Prior to joining the RCC, he was a research assistant professor at the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. His studies focused on self- and directed-assembly of soft matter building blocks, nanoscale interactions across solid and liquid interfaces, and GPU-accelerated models for molecular dynamics simulations. He has been an active contributor to the LAMMPS software package, a classical molecular dynamics code with a focus on materials modeling.
Dossay Oryspayev
Computational Scientist – High-Performance Computing
do1@uchicago.edu
Dossay is a computational scientist with expertise in high-performance computing (HPC).
Before joining the RCC, Dossay worked for many years in HPC-related areas and held a manager position. Recently, he has obtained the following certificates: "DevOps" from UChicago, "Negotiation Mastery" from Harvard Business School (HBS) Online, "Communications Excellence (Executive Education)" from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and "Management Essentials" from HBS Online.
Debasmita Samaddar
Senior Computational Scientist – Generalist
dsamaddar@uchicago.edu
Debasmita is a Senior Computational Scientist – Generalist at the Research Computing Center (RCC) and has more than a decade of experience in high-performance computing. She has a broad interest in algorithms with a particular focus on parallel in time algorithms. She has given many invited talks and authored numerous publications that cover topics in parallel in time applications and AI.
Debasmita obtained her BSc in physics from the University of Calcutta, India, an MS from the University of Delaware, Newark, and a Ph.D. from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She has worked and collaborated extensively across Europe, the UK, and the US. She won the prestigious ITER Monaco Fellowship, only five of which are awarded every two years. The fellowship took her to work at the world’s biggest nuclear fusion experimental facility in Cadarache, France. She has worked as an Exascale Algorithm Specialist alongside mentoring Ph.D. candidates from various universities at the Culham Centre of Fusion Energy, the UK’s national laboratory for nuclear fusion.
Parmanand Sinha
Computational Scientist – GIS, HPC
pnsinha@uchicago.edu
Parmanand Sinha is an HPC Scientist with more than a decade of experience in scientific computing and geospatial technologies. Trained in computational science with a focus on parallelization, he specializes in designing and optimizing HPC workflows for data science, deep learning, and advanced geospatial analytics. He harnesses Intel, CUDA, LLVM, and GNU compilers to accelerate code performance across HPC clusters.
As an ArcGIS Administrator, he specializes in managing cloud infrastructure and implementing robust security protocols. He is proficient in web frameworks and CI/CD pipelines and combines advanced computing methods with effective solutions. He develops scalable backend systems using FastAPI, Django, and Flask, creating versatile web applications that meet diverse organizational needs.
Parmanand leads workshops on containers, geospatial deep learning, and spatial analysis. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, a Ph.D. in Geospatial Information Sciences from the University of Texas at Dallas, and completed postdoctoral research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the University of Louisville.
Himanshi Yadav
Research Data Scientist – Natural Language Processing
hyadav@uchicago.edu
Himanshi is a research data scientist at the Research Computing Center (RCC) with expertise in human-centered multimodal machine learning and robotics. She holds a master’s degree in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining the RCC, she worked on affective computing specializing in speech and text, speaker diarization, deep brain stimulation for OCD and depression, and unsupervised clustering techniques for hyperspectral images. Her responsibilities at the RCC include providing computational solutions to faculty, post-docs, and doctoral candidates. She aspires to aid and conduct state-of-the-art research in machine learning and its applications and be a part of the AI revolution.
Youzhi Yu
Computational Scientist – Chicago Booth
youzhi@uchicago.edu
Youzhi.Yu@ChicagoBooth.edu
Youzhi Yu is a Computational Scientist at the University of Chicago's Research Computing Center (RCC) and Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth), specializing in the design and deployment of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. He also collaborates with industry organizations, including the J.P. Morgan Chase Institute.
With a comprehensive understanding of the AI ecosystem—from software development to hardware optimization—Yu builds sophisticated, end-to-end AI systems. His recent projects include developing conversational agents leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and scalable tool-calling frameworks. Yu's expertise spans the complete lifecycle of large language models (LLMs), from pre-training foundation models on large-scale GPU clusters to fine-tuning models on sensitive, proprietary datasets. His ability to integrate software excellence with deep hardware knowledge—encompassing GPUs for accelerated training and specialized ASICs for low-latency inference—enables him to craft secure, efficient, and bespoke AI solutions. An advocate for computational efficiency, Yu emphasizes code optimization to achieve significant energy savings in HPC and cloud environments.
A trained data scientist holding a Ph.D. in the field, Yu has a robust background in machine learning, deep learning, and software engineering. He has authored several widely adopted R packages, improving data science workflows globally. Yu regularly provides feedback to leading AI companies on their LLM API services. He also actively contributes to AI education at the University of Chicago, developing and leading workshops designed to bridge the gap between traditional academic curricula and cutting-edge technological innovation.
Mohsen Zand
Computational Scientist – Machine Learning
zand@uchicago.edu
Mohsen is a Computational Scientist at the Research Computing Center (RCC), specializing in Computer Vision and Machine Learning. Prior to joining the RCC, Mohsen served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Robotics and Computer Vision (RCV) lab at Queen's University in Canada. During this time, he was actively involved with the Ambient Intelligence and Interactive Machines (Aiim) lab and the Ingenuity Labs Research Institute.
Mohsen's research lies at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning, and robotics. He focuses on advancing the development of efficient and robust methods for object recognition, pose determination, and tracking. He has published in various venues including IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation, ECCV, 3DV, ICASSP, ICIP, VISAPP, and CRV.
HPC Systems and Operations
Pedram Esfahani
Junior HPC System Administrator & System Programmer
esfahani@uchicago.edu
Pedram Esfahani is a Junior HPC System Administrator & System Programmer. He got his B.Sc. in Engineering Physics from the Science and Research University of Tehran, Iran, in 2012. In 2014, he moved to the U.S. to pursue his M.Sc. in physics from the University of Akron and completed a thesis on computational modeling of negative refractive-index materials. Then, in 2016, he moved to Oregon to pursue his Ph.D. in physics and learn more advanced experimental and computational skills at Oregon State University. Pedram did rotations in experimental materials and optics labs working on projects about piezoelectric filters (EE dept.) and NSOM-AFM, and he briefly worked on DNA bioinformatics and computational biology using AI. Pedram eventually joined Dr. Bo Sun’s collective cell biophysics research group. Pedram's Ph.D. thesis focused on the chemotaxis of breast cancer cells, specifically the connection between cell migration direction and extracellular matrix gaps (mechano-sensing). In his work, he developed a pipeline consisting of machine learning algorithms to quantify cell migration direction and morphology in a 3D environment.
Gustavo Garcia Rondina
HPC System Administrator
grondina@uchicago.edu
Gustavo is a high-performance computing (HPC) system administrator driven by a deep enthusiasm for technology and scientific computing. With a background spanning over seven years in the administration of Linux-based HPC clusters, he focuses on the maintenance of the Research Computing Center's (RCC) HPC infrastructure with the ultimate goal of providing a positive user experience and comprehensive support to users from all scientific backgrounds. Before joining the RCC, Gustavo played a pivotal role in supporting HPC operations within the chemical industry in Germany.
Gustavo holds a Ph.D. in Computational Chemistry from the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany, complemented by a Master's degree in Computational Physics from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. His experience and academic achievements underscore his commitment to advancing the HPC endeavors of RCC.
Noah S. Oller Smith
Research Support and System Software Engineer
nos@uchicago.edu
Noah is a Research Support and System Software Engineer at the Research Computing Center (RCC). He is responsible for managing our infrastructure tools, developing automation solutions, and providing support to RCC users. He has experience working with researchers and faculty members across different scientific disciplines, including forestry, astrophysics, and civil engineering.
Prior to joining the RCC, Noah worked at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) and the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS), contributing to projects related to HPC, Science Gateways, and Cloud Computing. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Purdue University.
Varun Sharma
HPC Systems Engineer
varuns@uchicago.edu
Varun serves as an HPC system administrator at the Research Computing Center (RCC) with expertise in various hardware and software components of HPC clusters. He provides support in operations, integration, configuration, and management of compute, storage, and backup systems. He loves to explore and dig deeply into new technologies. Before joining the RCC, he acquired over 9 years of professional experience in IT & System Administration. He supported leading multinational customers like McKinsey & Company, IBM, HPE, CRAY, Ministry of Earth Sciences in India, Ministry of External Affairs in India, and Bharti Airtel Limited. He obtained his bachelor's degree in Technology from Rajasthan Technical University, India in 2011.