E. Wes Bethel
Senior Computer Scientist
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Data Analytics and Visualization Group,
Data Science and Technology Department,
Computational Research Division

Contact information.
Administrative Contact: Karen Whitenack


Biography

In the pursuit of cultivating technologies that can have a positive impact on science and society, Bethel is an innovator, a visionary, an entrepreneur, a mentor, a data and computer scientist, a technologist, and a leader. His technical background in computer and data science spans several fields, which lie at the nexus of computing and data: high performance computing, scientific/information visualization, graphics, scientific data/image analysis, and machine learning. Over the course of his 30+ years in the field, he has been instrumental in advancing the field of scientific visualization through R&D of new methods, software tools and applying them with success to many fields of science. At Berkeley Lab, he built a research group from three persons and no research funding into a vibrant program consisting of about 10 full-time staff, multiple student assistants and post-doctoral researchers, and multiple joint faculty appointments. He has mentored/supervised over 60 scientists, engineers, and students. The team produces an average of 30-35 publications per year and has a diverse funding portfolio of about $4-$5M/yr, and has earned an international reputation for high quality work in scientific visualization and analysis. He conceived and implemented a large, multi-institutional project that was DOE's largest ever open-science, scientific visualization program, the SciDAC Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technology (VACET). That program successfully made production-quality, petascale-capable visualization a reality for the DOE computational science community. He has worked closely with program management in the Energy Department's Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, where he architected, with input from the community, the visualization and analytics research agenda for the Exascale Computing Plan (now the Exascale Computing Project), and he has architected a data roadmap that focuses on DOE experimental and observational science programs. He is passionate about enabling scientific knowledge discovery through the convergence of data and computing, a pursuit that requires ongoing evolution and adaptation to a changing technological and scientific landscape. He is an ACM Distinguished Scientist, and a Senior Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (UC Berkeley).

CV: Full version (Dec 2019), 2pg NSF-style (Sep 2019)

Education

Ph.D. Computer Science University of California, Davis
MS Computer Science University of Tulsa
BS Information Systems University of Tulsa

Positions and Employment

1990– Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA
2014– Senior Fellow, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, University of California, Berkeley CA
2017– Adjunct Associate Professor, Computer Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA
1997–2010 R3vis Corporation, Novato, CA; Founding Technical Director, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Software Architect
2000–2001 Principal Development Engineer, University of California, Berkeley, Institute for Transportation Studies, Berkeley CA
1988–1989 Bethel Software, Fairfax CA
1987–1988 Software Engineer, Island Graphics Corporation, San Rafael, CA
1987 Consultant, Amoco Research Center, Tulsa, OK
1986–1987 Senior Graphics Engineer, Geoscan Inc., Tulsa, OK

Other Experience and Professional Memberships

1987– Member, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
1987– Member, ACM SIGGRAPH
2008– Member, ACM SIGHPC
1987– Associate Member, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Honors/Awards

2015 Interagency Partnership Award, by the Federal Laboratory Consortium. Recognizes laboratory employees, agencies, and private partners who collaboratively accomplished outstanding work in transferring a technology (UV-CDAT climate data analysis software).
2012 ACM Distinguished Scientist.
2014 Best Paper Award. A. Agranovsky, D. Camp, C. Garth, E. W. Bethel, K. I. Joy, and H. Childs. Improved Post Hoc Flow Analysis Via Lagrangian Representations. In Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Large Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV 2014)
2010 Best Paper Award. M. Howison, E. W. Bethel, and H. Childs. MPI-hybrid Parallelism for Volume Rendering on Large, Multi-core Systems. In Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization (EGPGV 2010).
2009 Best Paper Award. S. Kamil, C. Chan, S. Williams, L. Oliker, J. Shalf, M. Howison, E. W. Bethel, and Prabhat. A Generalized Framework for Auto-tuning Stencil Computations. In Proceedings of Cray User Group Conference.
2006 Best Panel Award. T. J. Jankun-Kelly, R. Kosara, G. Kindlmann, C. North, C. Ware, and E. Wes Bethel. Is There Science in Visualization? . IEEE Visualization 2006
2003 Best Application Paper Award. O. Kreylos, N. Max, B. Hamann, S. Crivelli, and E. W. Bethel. Interactive Protein Manipulation. In Proceedings of IEEE Visualization
2000, 2001, 2002 Fattest and Fastest Award. High Performance Bandwidth Challenge, SCXX Annual Conference Series.
1995 Most Innovative Set of AVS Modules Contributed: The Virtual Reality Modules and Libraries, presented by the International AVS Center.
1993 Recognition Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication to the Scientific Visualization Community, presented by the International AVS Center.
1992 Most Valuable Module Contributor, presented by the International AVS Center.
1991 Better World Award, presented by Stardent Computer.

Speaking

Technical Writing

Martial Arts

Yoga



Last Updated - Tuesday, 09-Feb-2021 12:12:58 PST
E. Wes Bethel, ewbethel at lbl dot gov