The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin has announced the arrival of Niall Gaffney in the newly created position of director of data intensive computing.
Gaffney most recently served as the principal computer scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) for the Hubble Space Telescope data archive and the Hubble Legacy Archive Project. A University of Texas at Austin graduate, he began his new role on 1 May.
Gaffney has managed some of the richest astronomical data ever recorded in terms of scientific and public impact. In his new role at TACC, Gaffney will oversee the centre's Big Data strategy, which includes storage and storage systems, data collections, analytics (data mining and statistics), and architectures for data driven science and data intensive computing.
TACC Director Jay Boisseau said: 'As a technologist with an astronomy background, Niall has taken some of the deepest, most sensitive catalogued data from telescopes and blended it with other available astronomical data to build a library for astronomers and the general public alike to use.
'He has a deep understanding of how to create tools from large data collections that researchers from all fields need now and will need in the coming years to drive fundamental research. Niall's expertise in managing and analysing large scientific data collections will help TACC address fundamental challenges concerning core techniques and technologies, problems and cyber infrastructure across disciplines based on national directives.'
