Katherine "Kathy" Anne Yelick is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Electrical Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

s at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, and the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

Education and career

Katherine Yelick received her SB, SM, and PhD in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. She joined the faculty at the

in 1991. She joined the research staff at

in 1996 as a joint-appointment faculty

research scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophic ...

, and has been the Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences since 2010. She is known for her work in

partitioned global address space In computer science, partitioned global address space (PGAS) is a parallel programming model paradigm. PGAS is typified by communication operations involving a global memory address space abstraction that is logically partitioned, where a portio ...

programming languages, including co-inventing the

Unified Parallel C Unified Parallel C (UPC) is an extension of the C programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines, including those with a common global address space ( SMP and NUMA) and those with distributed memory ...

(UPC) and Titanium languages. She also led the Sparsity project, the first automatically tuned library for

sparse matrix In numerical analysis and scientific computing, a sparse matrix or sparse array is a matrix in which most of the elements are zero. There is no strict definition regarding the proportion of zero-value elements for a matrix to qualify as sparse b ...

kernels, and she co-led the development of the Optimized Sparse Kernel Interface (OSKI). From 2008 to 2012 she was the

director Director may refer to: Literature * ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine * ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker * ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty Music * Director (band), an Irish rock band * ''D ...

of the

National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), is a high-performance computing (supercomputer) National User Facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for the United States Department of Energy Office of Scien ...

. From 2009 to 2015 she was a member of the

California Council on Science and Technology The California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization designed to offer expert advice to the California state government and to recommend solutions to science and technology-related pol ...

Selected publications

Awards and honors

In 2012 she was named as an

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

"for ercontributions to parallel computing languages that have been used in both the research community and in production environments." In 2013 she received the ACM-W Athena Lecturer award at SC13. She received the ACM Ken Kennedy Award in 2015. In 2017 she was elected to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

and to the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. She was elected as a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

in 2018. At the 2019 ACM/IEEE Supercomputing Conference SC19 she was honored by HPCwire as their Editor’s Choice for Outstanding Leadership in HPC.

Personal life

Yelick is married to

James Demmel, who is also an

and works in

and

numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathematic ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yelick, Katherine A. Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists Year of birth missing (living people) UC Berkeley College of Engineering faculty MIT School of Engineering alumni Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 21st-century American women