Franck Cappello

Franck Cappello is a distinguished computer scientist currently serving as a Project Manager and Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and as an Adjunct Research Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With over 30 years of research experience, he has made significant contributions to high-performance computing, particularly in the areas of resilience and fault tolerance at extreme scale, lossy compression of scientific data, and AI for science.

Dr. Cappello received his Ph.D. from the University of Paris XI in 1994 with highest honors ("très honorable avec les félicitations du jury"). His academic journey includes positions as a Junior Researcher at CNRS (1994-2003), Senior Researcher at INRIA (2003-2013), and Visiting Research Professor at the University of Illinois (2009-2013).

His research interests focus on high-performance parallel and distributed computing, resilience and fault tolerance at extreme scale, lossy compression of scientific data, and AI for science. Cappello has pioneered several high-impact software tools including XtremWeb (one of the first Desktop Grid software systems), MPICH-V fault tolerance MPI library, VeloC multilevel checkpointing environment, and SZ lossy compressor for scientific data. His work on the Grid'5000 project has enabled hundreds of researchers to conduct experiments in parallel and distributed computing, resulting in over 2000 research publications and supporting 300+ Ph.D. theses.

Dr. Cappello's recent publication record shows a strong integration of AI techniques with traditional HPC approaches, particularly in lossy compression, workflow management, and energy efficiency. His research demonstrates a consistent focus on practical solutions for real-world scientific computing challenges with emphasis on maintaining data fidelity while achieving significant data reduction. The publications reveal growing interest in GPU acceleration, wafer-scale engines, federated learning, and energy trade-offs in compressed I/O systems.

• IEEE Fellow (2017)
• 2024 IEEE CS Charles Babbage Award
• 2024 Europar Achievement Award
• 2022 ACM HPDC Achievement Award
• 2021 IEEE Transactions of Computer Award for Editorial Service and Excellence
• 2018 IEEE TCPP Outstanding Service Award
• Two R&D 100 awards (2019 and 2021) for innovative software
• 12 Best papers Finalists/Awards

Dr. Cappello has advised 22 Ph.D. students and served on 58 Ph.D. defense juries. He has secured over 60 research grants as main PI or Co-PI, including numerous DOE ECP projects, NSF grants, and European projects. His leadership extends to directing the Joint Laboratory on Extreme-Scale Computing (JLESC), which brings together seven prominent research centers in supercomputing. Currently, he leads the AuroraGPT Evaluation Group, focusing on evaluation methods for Large Language Models as research assistants, and continues to lead resilience and compression research at Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division.

Dr. Cappello directs several significant research initiatives including the Joint Laboratory on Extreme-Scale Computing and leads resilience and compression research at Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division. His teams have developed groundbreaking software frameworks like SZ and VeloC that are deployed on exascale systems. Through his leadership of the Grid'5000 project and JLESC, he has fostered international collaboration among researchers working on the frontiers of supercomputing. His current work on error-bounded lossy compression, resilient workflow management, and energy-efficient computing represents the cutting edge of scientific computing research with practical applications across numerous scientific domains.