Press Kits: Sun Grid Engine, Enterprise Edition Press Kit: Executive Bios

Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch
Director, Grid Computing
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch is the director of Grid Computing for Sun Microsystems, Inc. He joined Sun in July 2000 with more than 25 years of experience in software development, computational engineering, computer architecture, project management, teaching and training.

Following his studies of mathematics and physics at RWTH Aachen, Germany, Dr. Gentzsch received his doctoral degree in numerical methods for nonlinear analysis and worked in software development at Max-Planck-Institute of Plasmaphysics in Garching, and Siemens KWU in Erlangen. Dr. Gentzsch has also worked for the German Agency for Aerospace and Aeronautics (DLR) in Gttingen, for which he served as head of the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and Supercomputing Department.

From 1985 to 2000, Dr. Gentzsch was a professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University of Regensburg, Germany. At the same time, he consulted on supercomputing projects for IBM, Digital, Unisys, Cray, Alliant, and Convex.

In 1990, Dr. Gentzsch founded GENIAS Software GmbH, the Center for Numerically Intensive Applications and Supercomputing, the first parallel and distributed computing software and service company in Europe. Later, he helped found GENIAS Parallel Computing GmbH (1992), GENIAS Benelux BV (1995), GENIAS Internet (1996), GENIAS Graphics (1997) and GRIDWARE (1999).

Dr. Gentzsch joined Sun Microsystems through the July 2000 acquisition of GRIDWARE and its technology for distributed resource management, resource virtualization and administration. Today this technology is used in the Sun Grid Engine software family.

As director of Grid Computing, Dr. Gentzsch is responsible for Sun's grid technology development, strategy, and vision. He also heads Sun's company-wide Grid Computing Council and is recognized worldwide as an industry expert and evangelist for grid computing.

In the past 25 years, Dr. Gentzsch has published more than 150 articles and several books (as author or editor) regarding grid computing, applied mathematics, numerical methods, plasmaphysics, computational fluid dynamics, supercomputing, computer benchmarking, and distributed and parallel computing.

Other career highlights:

• Sun Chairman Award for Innovation, April 2002
• Development of a well-known set of computer test programs (The DLR Benchmark), and benchmarking of 40+ super- and mini-supercomputers worldwide
• Co-founder of the European bi-annual "SuParCup" award, co-founder and chairman of the "Initiative on Parallel Computing for the Bavarian Engineering Colleges," and co-founder and member of the Board of the "Society for Numerical Software" in Germany
• Member of GAMM, GI, HSB, PARS, SIAM, of the Editorial Board of the International Journal on "Parallel Computing," of the Board of the DMV/GAMM/GI-Working-Groups on "Parallel Algorithms and Architectures, PARS," and "Numerical Software," Co-founder and member of the board of the "European Benchmark Group, EuroBen"
• Consultant and reviewer for the European CEC and for the German and Austrian Ministry for Science and Technology, and member of the Advisory Board of the "International Journal on Parallel Computing"
• Initiator and project manager of industrial projects with Aérospatiale, Alliant, AUDI, BMW, Boeing, British Aerospace, Convex, Daimler Benz, DASA, Digital, ECMWF, ESA, E-Systems US, Ferrari, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, nCUBE, Parsytec, Rolls-Royce, Rover, SGI, Softway Australia, Sun, Unisys, Volkswagen, and research institutes and universities in Europe and in the USA