• Provide leadership and vision for TACC as a campus, state, and national research center that advances science and society through the application of advanced computing technologies
• Initiate new research & development programs that leverage TACC's advanced computational infrastructure and expertise
• Identify and lead efforts to acquire new technologies for enhancing TACC's resources, research & development programs, and user community
• Establish collaborations that advance TACC's mission, programs, and activities
• Lead TACC activities as resource provider and partner in the NSF TeraGrid, in the High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT) consortium, in the University of Texas System, and in other major regional and national partnerships.

• Large-scale parallel computing systems, especially architectures and performance characteristics
• Microprocessor architectures and performance characteristics
• Grid computing technologies, especially user portals
• Computational biology and biomedicine (recent)

• NSF TeraGrid: Provide leadership for TACC as a resource provider in the TeraGrid, serve on the Executive Steering Committee, and guide development of the TeraGrid User Portal.
• NSF Petascale HPC System: Serve as Project Director for a new NSF award to deploy an unprecedented 420 teraflops HPC system for the national community in 2007, and ensure it has maximum impact on scientific discovery.
• Scientific Computing Curriculum: Help define and create a new set of four academic classes designed for training the current and next generation of computational researchers in parallel computing, visualization & data analysis, and distributed & grid computing.
• UT System Partnership: Extend the impact of TACC's leading-edge HPC resources and staff expertise to the other 14 institutions in the UT System, with special emphasis on advancing research at the biomedical/health science institutions.

John ("Jay") R. Boisseau graduated with a bachelors degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Virginia in 1986 while also working as a computer consultant. He continued to work in Charlottesville for an additional year as a scientific programmer, then entered the graduate program in astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin. After obtaining his masters degree in 1990, Boisseau initiated his dissertation research on modeling the dynamics of Type Ia supernovae using Cray supercomputers. This work stimulated his interest in high performance computing, and led him to join the staff of the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center as a programmer analyst in 1994 while continuing his supernova modeling research. At ARSC, Boisseau helped develop and lead several projects and activities in the relatively new center while supporting a growing scientific user community.

Boisseau completed his dissertation and joined the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) in 1996 to advance his career in high performance computing. At SDSC, Dr. Boisseau became an Associate Director and created the Scientific Computing Department, with groups specializing in applications optimization, performance modeling, parallel tools development, grid portals development, and user support. He led several major SDSC projects for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) and also led SDSC's participation in the Department of Defense (DoD) Programming Environments and Training (PET) program. He also founded the IBM Scientific Computing User Group while at SDSC.

In June 2001, Boisseau returned to Austin to become the director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin. Under his direction, TACC has grown in size and stature to become one of the leading academic advanced computing centers in the US. Boisseau initiated a strong and growing research and development program at TACC while enhancing the computational resources to provide world-class capabilities, culminating in the recent award to TACC of the largest NSF award in UT Austin history: $59 million to acquire one of the most powerful computing system in the world in 2007 and to support US open research for four years. TACC participates as a resource provider and a technology developer in the NSF TeraGrid, with Boisseau serving as the UT Austin PI and a member of the Executive Steering Committee. Boisseau also leads UT Austin's involvement in the High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT) consortium and is beginning to work with other institutions in the UT System to enhance their research programs by leveraging TACC's advanced computing systems and expertise.

Boisseau's professional activities include performance characteristics of high-end computing systems and microprocessors, and the development of grid technologies and portals for computational science. His newest interest is the application of HPC and grid technologies to computational biology and biomedicine.