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Scott Baden: CRD’s Computer Languages and System Software Group Lead
May 18, 2016
Scott Baden
Scott Baden’s interest in computing ignited as a teenager in the early 1970s. At the time, he was living with his family in London, England; and his school had just acquired a programmable computer and encouraged students to practice on it. By the time his family returned to the U.S. at the end of the school year, Baden was hooked. In high school, he got his programming fix by mailing letters to a former English classmate who would key Baden's codes into the school computer, until his own high school acquired a PDP 11 during his senior year. He has been programming ever since.
Fast-forward 46 years and Baden is now leading the Computer Languages and Systems Software Group in Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division (CRD). In addition to managing the group, he will also be doing research on program restructuring to improve performance on supercomputers and also look into novel implementation techniques that may someday be incorporated in an automated program-restructuring tool.
"My research aims to improve the ability of domain scientists to use computers to 'raise the bar' on what sorts of problems can be solved on computers," says Baden.
Though he officially began his CRD post in April, Baden is no stranger to Berkeley Lab. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Lab’s Mathematics Department in the late 1980s and early 1990s after earning his Ph.D. in Computer Science at UC Berkeley. He left Berkeley Lab to become a faculty member in the University of California, San Diego’s (UCSD’s) Computer Science and Engineering Department and served in this role for almost 26 years, before returning to Berkeley Lab last month. Baden remains on the faculty at UCSD.
A native of Newton, Massachusetts, Baden earned his Bachelors Degree in Electrical Engineering at Duke University in 1978. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time outdoors. His hobbies include, photography, cooking and hiking. Now that he’s in back, Baden also looks forward to reacquainting himself with the Bay Area.
About Berkeley Lab
Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest scientific challenges are best addressed by teams, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and its scientists have been recognized with 16 Nobel Prizes. Today, Berkeley Lab researchers develop sustainable energy and environmental solutions, create useful new materials, advance the frontiers of computing, and probe the mysteries of life, matter, and the universe. Scientists from around the world rely on the Lab’s facilities for their own discovery science. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory, managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
