Dr. Hakizumwami Birali Runesha is the Assistant Vice President for Research Computing and founding Director of the Research Computing Center at The University of Chicago. He is the president elect of the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation (GLCPC), USA. Prior to joining the University of Chicago, he served as Director of Scientific Computing and Applications at the University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, Research Associate at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Research associate for the Multidisciplinary Parallel-Vector Computer Center at Old Dominion University, and Assistant Professor at the University of Kinshasa. Dr. Hakizumwami has more than 25 years of experience in high performance computing, big data and scientific software development. He has served as chair and member of review panels at the National Science Foundation. He served as principal investigator on a large number of research grants. and is the author of a number of journal articles, proceedings and conference papers. He hold a PhD Degree in Engineering from Old Dominion University, USA