Argonne National Laboratory

Awards and Recognition | Mathematics and Computer Science

Valerie Taylor receives Distinguished Alumni Award from UC Berkeley
Taylor recognized for sustained excellence in research and engineering, professional leadership, and support to UC Berkeley.
Valerie Taylor
Valerie Taylor, director of Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division, has been chosen to receive the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award in Electrical Engineering awarded by the University of California, Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Valerie Taylor has been chosen as a recipient of the 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award in Electrical Engineering awarded by the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The award winners are selected for their record of sustained excellence in research and engineering, leadership in the profession and in public affairs, and service/support to UC Berkeley.

Taylor joined Argonne National Laboratory in 2017 as director of the Mathematics and Computer Science (MCS) division and was named an Argonne Distinguished Fellow in 2019. She has an outstanding record of research achievements in performance analysis and modeling of parallel scientific applications, as well as significant leadership in expanding the diversity of underrepresented groups in the high-performance computing community. She is a fellow of both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). 

“I am honored to be recognized as a distinguished alumna of Berkeley,” Taylor said ​“The field of high-performance computing continues to fascinate me, particularly the tradeoffs of performance and power requirements. I hope to continue to serve as a leader in these areas as we face the new challenges and opportunities raised by heterogeneous computing.”

Taylor received her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991. She then joined the faculty at Northwestern University, during which time she also held a guest appointment with Argonne’s MCS division. In 2003, she joined Texas A&M University, where she served as department head of Computer Science and Engineering and, subsequently, senior associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Engineering and a Regents Professor and the Royce E. Wisenbaker Professor. Since joining Argonne, in addition to her role as MCS division director, Taylor has continuing her research in performance analysis and modeling and exploring artificial-intelligence-enabled science applications as well as complex simulations.

The award will be presented to Taylor during the Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium on February 13, 2020.