DDN Announces Winners of the 2015 Pioneer Awards, Recognizing Innovation That is Delivering World Changing Results

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Dr. Alf Wachsmann of Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, Steve Furmedge of Public Transport Authority of Western Australia, and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology Recognized for Leveraging Technological Innovation to Break Through Boundaries and Accelerate Time to Delivering Crucial Results

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – January 6, 2016 — /BackupReview.info/ — DataDirect Networks (DDN) has announced the winners of the 2015 Pioneer User Awards. The awards recognize and celebrate visionary individuals, organizations and/or multiple people who are embracing leading-edge high performance computing technologies to shatter long-standing technical limits and to accelerate business results and scientific insights. The recipients of the DDN 2015 Pioneer Awards are Dr. Alf Wachsmann, CIO at Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, Steve Furmedge, Director of Security Services at Public Transport Authority, and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology.

“Innovation is driven by brilliant minds combining ingenuity and technology to solve problems faster and more accurately than previously conceived possible,” said Molly Rector CMO, executive vice president product management and worldwide marketing, DDN. “DDN’s innovation in high performance storage and data management solutions is driven by the demands of the science and the business needs of the most data-intensive organizations on the globe. We are thrilled to recognize and celebrate the achievements of the 2015 DDN Pioneer Award recipients who are embracing advanced technologies and innovation to accelerate business results and vital scientific insights while pushing the boundaries of discovery.”

Tweet This: Hats off to @ddn_limitless Pioneer Award winners @AlfWachsmann, Steve Furmedge and @hudsonalpha. You rock! http://bit.ly/1OELtjf #HPC

Dr. Alf Wachsmann, CIO, Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine
As the CIO of Germany-based Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), which investigates basic biological concepts to understand disease mechanisms and to close the gap between basic biomedical and clinical research, Dr. Alf Wachsmann and his team were the first to test a SAP HANA cluster. Based on the requirements of life sciences researchers at the center, he and his team used their experience in integrating existing decentralized computing resources to form a federated in-memory database system. This approach combined advantages of cloud computing, such as efficient use of hardware resources and provisioning of managed software, with the security of storing and processing sensitive data on local hardware only.

Dr. Wachsmann’s experience includes systems design and management at the German Electron Synchrotron Lab (DESY) Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC; now SLAC National Accelerator Lab), and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). He has used DDN storage systems in the United States, Japan and Germany.

Steve Furmedge, Director of Security Services at the Public Transport Authority
A 30-year law enforcement professional and recognized expert on counter terrorism and security strategies for mass and public transit, Steve Furmedge leads security for the Public Transport Authority (PTA), which is the government agency that oversees Western Australia’s public transit infrastructure. Chartered with serving more than two million people in the Perth metropolitan area as well as more than 240 towns across the state, the PTA connects people and places safely and securely.

Furmedge and the PTA IT team deployed a massively scalable, state-of-the-art centralized repository for all CCTV footage for a security system that is expected to grow to 12PB. The system provides a significant improvement to PTA’s counter-terrorism and crime-reduction efforts by enabling real-time monitoring of activity for mass transit and public transportation. These efforts contributed to a 97 percent rate of successful prosecution, reduced graffiti cleanup by 70 percent and prevented a large number of fraudulent complaints and litigations against PTA and staff. Furmedge’s innovative and creative thinking helped to create a safe and secure infrastructure that continually maintains Perth’s status as one of the top 10 livable cities in the world.

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
Genomics is the language of life and HudsonAlpha scientists decipher its code. Propelled by game-changing technology and a drive for innovation, the expertise of HudsonAlpha researchers impacts the quality of human, plant and animal life around the world. HudsonAlpha is helping to save lives by accelerating genomic data analysis in order to solve some of the most pressing challenges in cancer, childhood genetic disorders, neuropsychiatric disorders and immune-mediated disease. To meet these challenges, HudsonAlpha leverages a unified architecture to meet its end-to-end data lifecycle needs, including the management of 4PB of annually-generated data from its Illumina XTEN sequencer and downstream analysis using the Edico Genome DRAGEN card.

Pioneers Jim Hudson and Lonnie McMillian developed the concept for HudsonAlpha in the early 2000s to develop, maintain and apply cutting-edge genomic technology across a wide spectrum of biology and biomedical research. Other innovators include Dr. Richard Myers who leads the institute, Dr. Shawn Levy who pioneered cutting-edge genomics processing, and Kevin Behn, the lead storage architect who continues to innovate new approaches for its expanding data requirements. In addition, Dr. Howard Jacob recently joined HudsonAlpha to pioneer the integration of genomic research into clinical settings.

The Pioneer Award winners were selected by a DDN panel of judges consisting of a Chief Scientist, Customer Advocate, HPC Market Expert and Commercial Market Expert. These awards recognize the use of DDN storage and data management innovation in high performance computing and big data environments.

The Pioneer awards acknowledge thought leaders across the globe who strive to accelerate discovery, insights and results within data-intensive HPC and enterprise big data markets by embracing leading-edge technology and innovation. Recognized annually, Pioneer award nominations will open August 1, 2016 for the 2016 Pioneer awards and winners will be announced next November at the 2016 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC16). Click here for more information on the awards.

Supporting Resources

• More on DDN DDN’s Pioneer Awards
• More on DDN DDN Products
• More on DDN DDN Customers
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ABOUT DDN
DataDirect Networks (DDN) is the world’s leading big data storage supplier to data-intensive, global organizations. For more than 15 years, DDN has designed, developed, deployed and optimized systems, software and solutions that enable enterprises, service providers, universities and government agencies to generate more value and to accelerate time to insight from their data and information, on premise and in the cloud. Organizations leverage the power of DDN technology and the deep technical expertise of its team to capture, store, process, analyze, collaborate and distribute data, information and content at largest scale in the most efficient, reliable and cost effective manner. DDN customers include many of the world’s leading financial services firms and banks, healthcare and life science organizations, manufacturing and energy companies, government and research facilities, and web and cloud service providers. For more information, go to www.ddn.com or call 1-800-837-2298.

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