Ed Seidel

Who is Ed Seidel?

Edward Seidel is Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation, was Director of NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, and continues as the Floating Point Systems Professor in Louisiana State University's Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Computer Science. Seidel announced in late 2012 that he would be leaving the NSF to join the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology near Moscow, Russia.

Before moving to NSF, Seidel was the founding director of the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Seidel is a career computer scientist and physicist who has received a number of awards for his work. His most noted achievements are in the field of numerical relativity, which involves solving Einstein's equations on computers. Seidel's research groups are known for modeling black hole collisions and for work in scientific computing. Seidel is also a co-founder of the Cactus Framework.

In Louisiana, Seidel served as the first Chief Scientist for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, which connects supercomputing resources throughout Louisiana to enable faster and more accurate research collaboration.