Los Alamos computer scientist honored as Asian American Engineer of the Year

Contact: Jim Danneskiold, jdanneskiold@lanl.gov, (505) 667-1640 (04-006)

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Feb. 13, 2004 -- A University of California computer scientist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory and known for his innovations in supercomputing and high-speed networks has been named the 2004 Asian American Engineer of the Year by the Chinese Institute of Engineers/USA.

Wu-chun Feng, leader of the Research and Development in Advanced Network Technology Team in Los Alamos' Computer and Computational Sciences Division, was honored for his many recent research achievements. He will receive the award in Santa Clara, Calif., at a banquet to take place at the Marriott Hotel Great America on Saturday, Feb. 28.

Feng leads a wide variety of research projects in high-performance networking and computing, network monitoring and traffic characterization, network protocols, computational and data grids, distributed resource management and cyber security.

Last year, he received a prestigious R&D 100 award, given by R&D Magazine to the top 100 technology innovations of the year. That award recognized his work on the Linux-based supercomputer dubbed Green Destiny, an efficient, reliable 240-node supercomputing cluster that occupied a two-by-three-foot area, used about one-tenth the electrical power of comparable supercomputers and never failed during its lifetime. The "phone-booth" supercomputer is part of Los Alamos' Supercomputing in Small Spaces project, whose goal is to build more efficient supercomputers that consume less power and space, resulting in cheaper total cost of ownership. More information is available at http://sss.lanl.gov online.

He also helped lead a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from Los Alamos, the California Institute of Technology, CERN and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center that last year smashed the Internet Land Speed Record by sustaining 2.38 billion bits a second over a distance of more than 6,200 miles between California and Switzerland, garnering a spot in the Guinness World Records Book. Feng made the new record possible through improvements to commodity 10-Gigabit Ethernet adapters.

Feng and his team at Los Alamos also re-engineered a crucial life-sciences research tool, transforming genome sequencing software from an overnight batch process to an interactive one. The much-used BLAST code finds DNA or amino-acid sequences by searching huge databases and reporting the statistical significance of similarities between the query and the database. Feng's working implementation, mpiBLAST, reduces the search time of a 300-kilobyte query from nearly 24 hours to less than 8 minutes. In its first four months of deployment, researchers and pharmaceutical companies downloaded mpiBLAST more than 4,000 times.

"This is a tremendous honor, one that reflects upon the unwavering dedication and invaluable contributions of the talented engineers and scientists with whom I work, as well as the love, understanding and support of my family. I hope the recognition given to my work at Los Alamos by the Chinese Institute of Engineers inspires young Asian-Americans to explore careers in computer science and engineering," Feng said

Feng joined Los Alamos in 1998 and quickly established his research reputation with more than 70 journal and conference publications and has given more than 20 invited talks and colloquia around the world. He is a fellow of the Los Alamos Computer Science Institute. He holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"We are proud of being in a position to recognize your career achievements by offering you this prestigious award," wrote Tai-Ran Hsu, chair of the nomination committee of the Chinese Institute of Engineers/USA, in notifying Feng of the award. A primary goal of the award program is to recognize outstanding Asian-American professionals in academics, public services and corporate organizations for their contributions to the nation and their communities. More information about the awards program and the Feb. 28 event is available at http://www.cie-usa.org/aaeoy.html online.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is operated by the University of California for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of the U.S. Department of Energy and works in partnership with NNSA's Sandia and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to support NNSA in its mission.

Los Alamos enhances global security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to defense, energy, environment, infrastructure, health and national security concerns.

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