I currently work as an Architect and group lead in the eXtreme Computing Group (XCG), a new organization in Microsoft Research established to push the boundaries of computing. My team is responsible for developing core  tools and services for compute and data intensive research. Our goal is to make simple yet powerful tools available, that any researcher can use to extract insights by mining and combining diverse data sets. Specific examples include NCBI BLAST on Azure, the Daytona iterative MapReduce runtime for Windows Azure, and Excel DataScope.  Our team also offers tutorials on cloud computing, identifies best practices for deploying research applications and data collections in the cloud, such as the AzureScope service, and serve as thought leaders on the application of cloud computing for research. I am frequent public speaker and Microsoft spokesperson on the topic.

Prior to joining XCG I worked a Principal Architect for External Research (MSR), where I founded and led the Advanced Research Services and Tools (ARTS) team. The ARTS team was responsible for developing innovative tools and services using Microsoft products and technology accelerate research, such as the Trident Scientific Workflow Workbench, The Research Information Centre VRE, and Dryad/DryadLINQ on HPCS. Our team also provided strategic and tactical hands-on technological leadership to projects across External Research’s international engagements.

I joined Microsoft in 1997 as a Researcher in the Database Group of Microsoft Research, where I was involved in a number of systems research projects and product development efforts in database systems, application recovery, workflow and stream processing. Throughout my career at Microsoft I have enjoyed developing ideas from basic research, through proof of concept prototypes to incubation efforts in product groups. Microsoft Research, and eXtreme Computing Group in particular, is a truly unique and rewarding organization in which to work.

Select Presentations

• Iterative MapReduce Research on Azure, demonstration at SC'11 in Seattle WA Nov. 2011 (PDF)
• Cloud Computing at Scale, invited talk at the 2011 eXtremely Large Databases Conference & Workshop (XLDB'11) held at SLAC in Palo Alto CA, October 2011 (PPT show)
• Windows Azure for Research, Tutorial presented at the IEEE eScience'10 Conference in Brisbane Australia and invited talk at NICTA in Sydney, December 2010 (PPT show).
• NCBI BLAST on Windows Azure, Presented at SuperComputing 2010 (SC10) in New Orleans LA, November 2010 (PPT show).
• Data Laden Clouds, invited keynote at MTAGS'10 Workshop at SC'10 (PPT show).
• Azure for Science Research: From Desktop to the Cloud, Invited Presentation, Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2010, Redmond WA, July 2010 (PDF).
• Cloud Computing for Science, Keynote Presentation, 22nd International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Dabase Management, SSDBM'10, Heidelberg, Germany, June 2010 (PDF).
• Emerging Trends and Converging Technologies in Data Intensive Computing, Invited Keynote, National e-Science Centre Workshop, Edinburgh, March 2010.
• Cloud Computing, Invited Keynote, IEEE P2P’09, Seattle, WA Sept. 2009 (PPT show).
• Cloud Computing Architecture and Application Programming, Tutorial, SC’09, Portland, OR (PDF).
• Data Intensive Research in the Cloud, Invited Talk, National e-Science Centre Workshop, Edinburgh, March 2009 (PDF).
• Tools and Services for Data Intensive Research, Invited Tutorial, ADVCOMP’09, Oct. 2009 (PPT show).
• A Tale of Two Workflows, Keynote, IEEE Scientific Workflow and Business Workflow in eScience (PPT show and a related talk presented at ADVCOMP'09 PPT show).
• Lessons from Building the Research Information Centre (RIC), Presented at the UK eScience All Hands Meeting (PDF).
• Opportunities and Challenges in Enabling Effective eScience, Invited Keynote, presented at ADVCOMP’08.
• Trends in Data Storage and Management, Invited Talk, Oxford University, 2008.
• Scientific Workflow for Project Neptune, Invited Talk, ETH MICCS 2008 (PPT show).

Recent Professional Service

• IEEE eScience 2012 organizing committee. 
• 12th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Grid Computing, Vice Chair of cloud computing and virtualization (Grid 2012).
• 24th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Systems (SSDBM 2012).
• 28th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2012).
• Co-Chair of the 2nd Int'l Workshop on Data Intensive Computing in the Cloud, DataCloud-SC 2011.
• XLDB (eXtremely Large Database Systems) - Europe 2011.
• DataCloud 2011 - First International Workshop on Data Intensive Computing in the Clouds, in conjunction with IEEE IPDCS'11).
• DIDC 2011 - Fourth International Workshop on Data Intensive Distributed Computing, in conjuction with HPDC 2011.
• 20th International ACM Symposium on High Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2011).
• 27th International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2011)
• Challenges of Large Applications in Distributed Environments (CLADE 2010)
• ACM ScienceCLOUD 2010
• 4th Int’l Workshop on Workflow systems in e-Science (WSES09)
• International Conference on Very Large Database Systems (VLDB) 2008, 2006, and 2001
• ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) 2008 and 2002.
• IEEE Scientific Workflow 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.
• IEEE Advances in Computing (ADVCOMP) 2009 and 2008.
• IEEE Services Computing Conference (SCC) 2007.
• IEEE Distributed Event Based Systems (DEBS) 2007.