Pothen Named Distinguished Alum

10-09-2009

Prof. Alex Pothen was selected as a 2009 Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IITD). IITD recognized Pothen (PDF) with this distinction for his achievements which have brought acclaim to their institution. They commend his outstanding contributions as a researcher, scientist and educator. Pothen was one of four recipients of this prestigious award. He was presented with plaques and a scroll in August to commemorate this honor.

Pothen's research interests are in computational science and engineering (CSE), high performance computing, and bioinformatics. Within CSE, his research is in combinatorial scientific computing (CSC), an interdisciplinary research area where discrete mathematics and algorithms are applied to formulate and solve combinatorial problems from the sciences and engineering. This work has been applied to modeling chromatographic separations in chemical engineering; controlling electric power grids; modeling electronic circuits and devices; visualizing organs as they deform during surgery; identifying protein biomarkers for lung and prostate cancer; and understanding the proteomics of the human T-cell leukemia virus, type 1.

Pothen joined Purdue in 2008 from Old Dominion University. He is a Professor of Computer Science and the Director of the Computing Research Institute. He is also the Director of the Combinatorial Scientific Computing and Petascale Simulations (CSCAPES) Institute, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science for 2006-2011. Pothen has held positions at Penn State University, University of Waterloo, University of Wisconsin, and ICASE, a research institute at NASA.