Thks mch: A toast and a roast for Bill Buzbee

SCD honors past director's 11 years of service . . .

Bill Buzbee Contents Search Article index Back issues Subscribe Contact us SCD

by Lynda Lester Former Texan Bill Buzbee retired from the SCD directorship on 25 September 1998, and SCD staff wore cowboy boots and bola ties to honor his 11 years of service to the division. Buzbee's farewell party that afternoon entailed a toast and a roast, as SCD associate director Bernie O'Lear and Visualization Group head Don Middleton gave a retrospective of Buzbee's years as head honcho of SCD. O'Lear noted that it was a gray and stormy day when Buzbee came to NCAR in April 1987. SCD awaited its new hero, hoping for a John-Wayne-type hombre from the south. The character who showed up was someone else! Citing Buzbee's suitability for the job, O'Lear noted that Bill had excellent handwriting, took advice only from the most qualified sources, and was loquacious in feedback to employees. However, said O'Lear, Buzbee's true accomplishments as director were many. At the top of the list was his acquisition of 39 supercomputers, servers, and automated cartridge systems for scientific computing. Buzbee also oversaw the continuous evolution of the Mass Storage System from a relatively small system with ~300,000 files to one that serves more than five million files. (Statistics on equipment acquisitions and MSS growth from 1987-1998 are here.) Notable successes Other notable sucesses during Buzbee's tenure were: The establishment in 1991 of the Model Evaluation Consortium for Climate Assessment (MECCA), a partnership dedicated to modeling climate change due to greenhouse gases The establishment in 1994 of the Climate Simulation Laboratory in support of projects of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (GCRP) The establishment in 1995 of the Distributed Climate Simulation Laboratory (DCSL), a project to evaluate very-high-speed Backbone Network Service (vBNS) support of distributed supercomputer applications and transport of large datasets Two positive five-year reviews of SCD from the National Science Foundation-appointed Scientific Programs Evaluation Committee The infamous procurement Buzbee led the NCAR procurement team that was the first U.S. group to evaluate the NEC SX-4, one of the world's most powerful computers. After NCAR announced in 1996 that the SX-4 had won the procurement, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) initiated a dumping investigation. Buzbee testified before the International Trade Commission in August 1997. The DOC assigned a dumping margin of 454% for NEC supercomputers, and the National Science Foundation refused to approve the award for the SX-4. "We knew from the beginning that chances of success were small," Buzbee said later, "but the superiority of the SX-4 relative to other systems was dramatic. Had we been successful, the SX-4 would have allowed simulations in 1997 that even today are not possible at any U.S. organization." Other milestones Buzbee was program chair for the Supercomputing '96 conference and general chair for Supercomputing '92 in Minneapolis. He also served on committees of the White House Science Council and the National Research Council. He lectured frequently at universities, seminars, and conferences, and his publications include three papers in Science magazine, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As a researcher, Buzbee made contributions to mathematical software, numerical linear algebra, and the numerical solution of partial differential equations. Before coming to NCAR, Buzbee spent 25 years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of New Mexico. (For more information on Buzbee's early adventures, see "The untold story: How Bill Buzbee got to NCAR.") Although Buzbee's last day as director was 25 September, he will be a regular SCD employee till 31 December. Salutes, testimonials, and thanks Saluting Buzbee's contributions at his retirement party were Dr. Cliff Jacobs from the National Science Foundation; Dr. Richard Anthes, president of UCAR; Dr. Robert Serafin, director of NCAR; and SCD deputy director Pete Peterson. After forty minutes of moving testimonials, Peterson presented Buzbee with a set of gifts, including a framed photo of the cold front that rolled in on Buzbee's first day at NCAR; a scrapbook of photos and well wishes from SCD staff; and a pair of spurs and a lasso, which no Texas cowboy should be without. O'Lear flashed a final slide onscreen that summed up SCD's feelings for Bill Buzbee: "You're the BEST and we wish you the very BEST in all your future endeavors." O'Lear closed the toast and the roast with Buzbee's famous and oft-quoted e-mail communication: "Thks mch!"

Contents || Search || Article index || Back issues || Subscribe || Contact us || SCD