Ryan Bradley has been named Director of Research Computing at Lehigh, following a comprehensive national search. Ryan, who started his new position on January 17, succeeds Alex Pacheco, who resigned from the university in July.

Lehigh’s Research Computing Team, part of Library and Technology Services, provides high-performance computing hardware, network infrastructure, and consulting and training services in support of faculty and researchers across all five university colleges.

The Research Computing group is integral to some of the most important research initiatives at Lehigh, harnessing the power of Hawk, a 34-node, 800TB Ceph storage research computing cluster, to conduct research on an array of scientific topics spanning physics, chemistry, biological sciences, and engineering. At Lehigh, the group also anticipates playing a key role in facilitating high-impact HPC projects that may emerge as part of the university’s Strategic Plan.

Ryan most recently served as an Associate Research Engineer in the Alliance for Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Treatment Innovation (ADVANCE) at Johns Hopkins University. In that role, he developed and scaled numerical algorithms for use in an FDA-approved, randomized and controlled clinical trial (OPTIMA, Optimal Target Identification via Modeling of Arrhythmogenesis). He also managed a five-member engineering team to develop and operate the clinical pipeline. Prior to that, Ryan served as a Software Engineer for Advanced Research Computing at Hopkins (ARCH) and the Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center (MARCC) at Johns Hopkins.

"We are pleased to have been able to attract someone of Ryan’s experience and expertise to Lehigh and look forward to having him work with our talented researchers to advance the area of Research Computing,” said Ilena Key, Chief Technology Officer. As Lehigh looks to expand the areas in which it conducts research, Ryan will be integral with helping Lehigh prepare to support increased computing needs and to support existing clients of HPC research, she said.

Said Bradley, “I am thrilled to join the Lehigh community, and I’m looking forward to leading research computing efforts to support instruction and scientific discovery in new and creative ways. I hope to demystify the rapidly-evolving computing technologies so that every member of the community can use computing to advance their research and training.”

Ryan is the author or co-author of more than a dozen papers and has taught several courses, seminars, and practicums at Johns Hopkins and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to teaching, Ryan has also provided training and mentorship to researchers and students at undergraduate through post-doctoral levels at both universities. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Penn, where he also served as a postdoctoral researcher and specialized in computational biophysics. Ryan holds bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering and mathematics from Penn State. He received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) in 2010.

Greg Reihman, Vice Provost for Library and Technology Services, added, “I’m grateful to the search committee for their work in bringing Ryan to Lehigh. As director, he will play a crucial role in shaping the future of research computing at Lehigh. He will lead long-term strategic planning, advise on investment in high-performance computing, collaborate with all five university colleges and individual researchers, pursue federal funding opportunities for research computing initiatives, and represent Lehigh at the regional, national, and international level. We will also count on him to design, select, acquire, and develop hardware and software infrastructure for research computing, manage its annual budget, and ensure the research computing group is equipped with the technical expertise necessary to meet specific needs of the Lehigh research community. Ryan is eminently well prepared for this work and I am delighted to know that his expertise is now part of the research and teaching support LTS offers the Lehigh community.”

Committee members included:

  • Ilena Key (Chair), Chief Technology Officer, LTS
  • Ed Webb III, Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics and Co-Chair of the Research Computing Steering Committee
  • Eric Zematis, Chief Information Security Officer, LTS
  • Amanda Caton, Assistant Director, Technology Infrastructure and Operations, LTS
  • Jeremy Mack, Data and Visualization Specialist, LTS
  • Steve Anthony, HPC Architect, LTS

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