Ed Seidel

Ed Seidel is the director of the LSU Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, in Baton Rouge, LA. Seidel is a career computer scientist and physicist who has received many international awards for his work. His most noted achievements are in the field of numerical relativity, which involves modeling black hole collisions to detect the existence of gravitational waves.

Seidel also is the Chief Scientist for the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, which connects supercomputing resources throughout Louisiana to enable faster and more accurate research collaboration.

In addition to serving as director of the CCT at LSU, Seidel is the Floating Point Systems Professor in LSU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, and he serves as a professor in LSU's Department of Computer Science as well.

Seidel, who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Yale University, came to Baton Rouge to lead the CCT in 2003. Prior to his work at CCT, he was with the Albert Einstein Institute in Potsdam, Germany and also worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

In November 2006, Seidel received the Sidney Fernbach Award at the Supercomputing Conference in Tampa, FL. This award, which is one of the highest honors in computing, was awarded for his achievements in numerical relativity.