HPDC 2026 Achievement Award

We are happy to announce that Carl Kesselman is the recipient of the 2026 Achievement Award in High Performance Distributed Computing.

Citation: For his contributions to high-performance distributed computing in the areas of grid computing architecture and applications, as well as his community leadership

Dr. Kesselman will deliver a keynote address and be recognized at the HPDC 2026 conference in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

carl kesselman

Carl Kesselman is the William M. Keck Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California, with appointments in the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, the Keck School of Medicine, and the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry. He is Director of the Informatics Systems Research Division at the USC Information Sciences Institute and is internationally recognized as one of the pioneers of Grid Computing and distributed cyberinfrastructure. Kesselman co-founded the Globus Project, whose technologies and concepts helped establish the foundations for modern distributed, cloud, and data-intensive computing systems. His research has spanned distributed systems, scientific cyberinfrastructure, data integration, security, and large-scale collaborative science platforms. More recently, his work has focused on data-centric socio-technical ecosystems, AI-enabled scientific infrastructure, and agent-mediated systems that support long-running human-machine scientific interactions. He has co-authored four papers recognized in HPDC's retrospective list of the most important papers from the conference's first twenty years. Kesselman is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, and the British Computer Society. His honors include the British Computer Society's Lovelace Medal, the IEEE Internet Award, and the IEEE Computer Society's Goode Memorial Award.


Past Winners
  • 2025: Michela Taufer, for her contributions to volunteer computing and advancing high-performance computing.
  • 2024: Laxmikant (Sanjay) Kale, for pioneering development of task-based adaptive parallel programming models and runtime systems, leading to a new category of highly scalable scientific applications.
  • 2023: Manish Parashar, for pioneering contributions in high performance parallel and distributed computational methods, data management, in-situ computing, and international leadership in cyberinfrastructure and translational computer science.
  • 2022: Franck Cappello, for his pioneering contributions in methods, tools, and testbeds for resilient high performance parallel and distributed computing.
  • 2021: Rosa M. Badia, for her innovations in parallel task-based programming models, workflow applications and systems, and leadership in the high performance computing research community.
  • 2020: No award made.
  • 2019: Geoffrey Fox, for his foundational contributions to parallel computing, high-performance software, the interface between applications and systems, contributions to education, and outreach to underrepresented communities.
  • 2018: Satoshi Matsuoka, for his pioneering research in the design, implementation, and application of high performance systems and software tools for parallel and distributed systems.
  • 2017: David Abramson, for his pioneering research in the design, implementation, and application of high performance systems and software tools for parallel and distributed systems.
  • 2016: Jack Dongarra, for his long-standing and far-reaching contributions in high performance linear algebra and large-scale parallel and distributed computing.
  • 2015: Ewa Deelman, for her significant influence, contributions, and distinguished use of workflow systems in high-performance computing.
  • 2014: Rich Wolski, for pioneering and high-impact contributions to grid, cloud, and parallel computing.
  • 2013: Miron Livny, for his significant contribution and high impact in the area of high-throughput computing.
  • 2012: Ian Foster, for his initiative in the creation and development of grid computing and his significant contributions to high-performance distributed computing in support of the sciences.