Grey Ballard

Dr. Grey Ballard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Wake Forest University. He earned a B.S. in Math and Computer Science (2006), M.A. in Math (2008) from Wake Forest, and PhD in Computer Science (2013) from the University of California, Berkeley. He was a Truman Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories before joining Wake Forest.

Research Focus: Ballard develops communication-optimal algorithms for high-performance computing, particularly in tensor decompositions, symmetric matrix computations, and nonnegative matrix factorization. His work combines numerical linear algebra with parallel algorithm design to reduce data movement costs in distributed systems.

Publications demonstrate expertise in communication lower bounds, randomized tensor rounding, and visualization tools for parallel algorithms. He has contributed software packages such as TuckerMPI, GentenMPI, and PLANC for large-scale data compression and clustering.

Scientific Awards:

• Wake Forest Excellence in Research Award
• NSF CAREER Award
• SIAM Linear Algebra Prize
• Three Conference Best Paper Awards (SPAA, IPDPS, ICDM)
• C.V. Ramamoorthy Distinguished Research Award (UC Berkeley)
• ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award – Honorable Mention

Teaching: Courses include Introduction to Computer Science, Numerical Linear Algebra, and Parallel Algorithms. He has developed educational tools using the Thread-Safe Graphics Library to visualize parallel dynamic programming and collective communication.