Supercomputing company Cray has announced the appointment of Stathis Papaefstathiou to the position of senior vice president of research and development. Papaefstathiou will be responsible for leading the software and hardware engineering efforts for all of Cray’s research and development projects.
With more than 30 years of tech experience, Papaefstathiou has held senior-level positions at Aerohive Networks, F5 Networks, and Microsoft. In his most recent position at Aerohive, Papaefstathiou was the senior vice president of engineering and led product development across the company’s entire product portfolio, including network hardware, embedded operating systems, cloud-enabled network management solutions, big data analytics, and DevOps.
‘At our core, we are an engineering company, and we’re excited to have Stathis’ impressive and diverse technical expertise in this key leadership position at Cray,’ said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. ‘Leveraging the growing convergence of supercomputing and big data, Stathis will help us continue to build unique and innovative products for our broadening customer base.’
Prior to Aerohive, Papaefstathiou served as vice president of product development at F5 Networks and was responsible for defining the strategies for dynamic datacentres, cloud, and virtualisation. Previously, Papaefstathiou held several technical and senior management positions at Microsoft in high-performance computing, distributed operating systems, datacentre automation, as well as in Microsoft Research. He received his PhD in computer science from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
Papaefstathiou will take over the position currently held by Peg Williams, who is retiring from Cray. Papaefstathiou will work with Williams through a transition period prior to her retirement.
‘Peg has played an instrumental role in shaping the company and our products throughout her career at Cray, and I sincerely thank her for her efforts and contributions,' said Ungaro. 'She will be missed, and all of us at Cray wish her the best in retirement.'
‘Leading the R&D teams at Cray is both an honour and an exciting opportunity, and I look forward to working with this talented group to expand the boundaries of what can be made possible with a Cray supercomputer’ said Papaefstathiou.
