• Gropp honored "for contributions to numerical software in the area of linear algebra and high-performance parallel and distributed computing"
• He has been a major influence on HPC, with particular emphasis on its role in scientific computing
• Created or played major role in the development of MPI, MPICH, and PETSc
• Gropp is the co-PI for Blue Waters sustained petascale computing effort and deputy director of IACAT

William Gropp, the Paul and Cynthia Saylor Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, “For contributions to numerical software in the area of linear algebra and high-performance parallel and distributed computation.”

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

“This is a significant recognition and prestigious honor for one of our distinguished faculty,” stated Ilesanmi Adesida, dean of the College of Engineering and also a member of the NAE. “It was also great to see that several of our alumni were among the new NAE members as well. This is yet another indication of the impact our college and this university has on the world. It is further testament to the excellence to which we continue to aspire.”

Gropp has been a major influence on the field of high performance parallel computing, with particular emphasis on its role in scientific computing. His career has been characterized by his ability to work both the architecture and application sides of the HPC equation, enabling him to make vital contributions that solve some of the most pressing issues in science and computing.

His research interests are in parallel computing, software for scientific computing, and numerical methods for partial differential equations. His work investigates methods for combining numerical analysis techniques with parallel processing techniques to form solutions appropriate for execution on modern computing systems. His research also addresses issues such as scalability and hierarchical memory models in parallel computers.

Gropp played a major role in creating MPI, the standard interprocessor communication interface for large-scale parallel computers. Gropp is also co-author of MPICH, one of the most influential MPI implementations to date, and co-wrote two books on MPI: Using MPI and Using MPI2. He also co-authored the Portable Extensible Toolkit for Scientific Computation (PETSc), one of the leading packages for scientific computing on highly parallel computers.

Among his other accomplishments, Gropp developed adaptive mesh refinement and domain decomposition methods with a focus on scalable parallel algorithms, and discussed these algorithms and their application in the book he co-authored, Domain Decomposition: Parallel Multilevel Methods for Elliptic Partial Differential Equations.

Gropp is involved in several other advanced computing projects, including performance modeling, data structure modification for ultra-high-performance computers, and development of component-based software to promote interoperability among numerical toolkits.

“It would be difficult to underestimate Bill’s contribution to the field,” said Rob A. Rutenbar, the Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and head of the Department of Computer Science. “He has made game-changing contributions in multiple areas of high performance parallel computing, and is now helping to lead the effort to sustained petascale computing with his role in the Blue Waters computing project at Illinois. This prestigious award is an indication of his pioneering contributions. We are extremely proud of his accomplishments.” 

Gropp serves as co-principal investigator for Blue Waters, a project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to build the first sustained-petascale resource for open scientific computing. Gropp also serves as deputy director for research at the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technology at Illinois.

Gropp is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE, has received the IEEE Computer Society Sidney Fernbach Award honoring innovative uses of high performance computing in problem solving, has received two R&D 100 awards, and was named the inaugural HPC Community Leader by insideHPC.com.

Gropp is one of  68 new NAE members and nine foreign associates in this year’s class. This brings the total U.S. NAE membership to 2,267 and the number of foreign associates to 196.