Center Administration
Mark K. Smith
Executive Director
Smith brings to UPCRC broad experience in working with the global academic research community and Fortune 500 hardware and software companies. Prior to joining UPCRC, he built and managed an international research community comprised of 71 leading universities, research centers, supercomputing centers and national labs, supported by 5 industrial sponsors.
Early in his career, Smith helped launch several software companies and has gone through the full startup experience, including raising investor capital and producing, selling, and supporting commercial developer tools and 3-D modeling software. His current research interests include data center power management and sustainable computing. He is leading an Illinois research initiative to address data center energy efficiency and is actively involved with several energy conservation campus initiatives. Smith holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and an MBA from the University of Illinois.
Cheri Helregel
Outreach Coordinator
As Outreach Coordinator for UPCRC Illinois, Cheri oversees coordination of the Summer School on Multicore Programming and similar educational outreach events. She also makes lots of (good) noise promoting UPCRC Illinois research and activities. Cheri graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Advertising. Her history of working with computer science professionals dates back to the original National Center for Supercomputing Applications established at Illinois in 1986. Cheri enjoys investing her time and talents in promoting great work and great people. Cheri also enjoys teaching and learning about best practices in teaching.