New ICHEC Director Posted on 21 February 2008

Dear Sir / Madam,

Re: Professor Jim Slevin, ICHEC Director

I am very pleased to tell you that Professor Jim Slevin, President of the Royal Irish Academy, has agreed to take up the position of Director of the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC).

Jim, as you probably know, has had an outstanding career as an academic. He has worked at CERN and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena), as well as at the University of Stirling (Scotland) and NUI, Maynooth. Most recently he has been an Officer of the Royal Irish Academy and has been its President since 2005. Jim joins ICHEC on a half-time basis until his appointment in the Academy ends in mid-March this year, and thereafter he is full time with ICHEC.

Jim joins us at a very exciting time for ICHEC:

• The initial High-End computing services are well established, and researchers are achieving results and publishing significant research findings;
• The relationship with Met Eireann is delivering both the daily forecast, and the development of more sophisticated forecasting models;
• The BlueGene computers are installed and already are delivering large scale capability computing to Irish researchers;
• The PRTLI./IV E-inis project with DIAS, that will expand the range of computational resources available to ICHEC, is getting underway.

On behalf of the ICHEC Oversight Board, I am delighted to welcome Jim as ICHEC Director.

Yours sincerely

__________
D. Jennings
Chairman, ICHEC Oversight Board