Edward Seidel

Edward "Ed" Seidel (born August 21, 1957 in Bethesda (Maryland) ) is an American astrophysicist and computer scientist.

Seidel holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from the College of William & Mary , a master's degree in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in astrophysics from Yale University . Seidel was head of the numerical relativity group at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Golm and, from 2003, founding director of the Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University , before becoming a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (in the physics departments , Astronomy and computer science). He headed the Office for Cyberinfrastructure and was Assistant Director for Mathematics and Physics for the National Science Foundation and from 2012 to 2014 was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation of the MIT Skoltech Initiative at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology in Moscow . From 2014 to 2017 he was director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois. He then returned to the University of Illinois, where he is Vice President, Economic Development and Innovation of the University of Illinois System, which includes the universities of Chicago, Urbana, and Springfield.

He deals with numerical relativity, the solution of the equations of general relativity on the computer, for example for the collision of black holes.

In 2006 he received the Sidney Fernbach Award and he received the Gordon Bell Prize and the Heinz Billing Prize of the Max Planck Society. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science , and a member of IEEE and SIAM .

Web links

• Website at the University of Illinois