Fellows
JLESC Fellowship Program
Alongside the existing institutional partnerships, individuals elevated to JLESC Fellows are invited to participate in JLESC activities such as workshops and projects. Furthermore, they can invite a student or early-career members from their group to join them. The JLESC Fellow designation is intended to provide a way to continue collaborations with researchers who had been members of a JLESC institution but are no longer directly associated with one of the current JLESC institutions. Candidates must be nominated by the executive directors and approved by the steering committee.
Current JLESC Fellows
Dr. Michela Taufer
University of Tennessee Knoxville
Dr. Michela Taufer, an AAAS Fellow and ACM Distinguished Scientist, holds the Jack Dongarra Professorship in High-Performance Computing in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is an alumna of the University of Padova and ETH Zurich, where she received a BS in Computer Engineering and a degree in Computer Science, respectively. Taufer has worked on interdisciplinary computational chemistry and computer systems projects as a La Jolla Interfaces in Science Training Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, and The Scripps Research Institute.
Taufer’s research spans scientific applications across diverse platforms, from supercomputers to cloud environments, combining artificial intelligence with high-performance computing, computer simulations, and data analytics. She has led numerous interdisciplinary projects and is committed to mentoring students from diverse domains. Additionally, Taufer actively promotes reproducibility in computing and data democratization, advocating for open-access frameworks, standardized data-sharing practices, and collaborative tools to enhance transparency and inclusivity in scientific research. Her efforts aim to make advanced computational resources more accessible, bridging gaps across disciplines and empowering a diverse community of researchers to drive innovation.