Keyes is the founding dean of KAUST's division of Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering. He is also an adjunct professor in applied physics and applied mathematics at Columbia University, and an affiliate of several laboratories of the US Department of Energy. Keyes' work focuses on the algorithmic interface between parallel computing and the numerical analysis of partial differential equations, with an emphasis on scalable solvers for emerging extreme architectures that require drastic reductions in communication and synchronization. For his algorithmic influence on scientific simulations, Keyes has been recognized as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) and of the American Mathematical Society. Keyes' other honors include the IEEE Computer Society's Sidney Fernbach Award, the Association for Computing Machinery's Gordon Bell Prize, and the 2011 SIAM Prize for Distinguished Service to the Profession.
Best known as the "father of Beowulf," Sterling developed groundbreaking research that dramatically reduced the cost and increased the accessibility of supercomputers. Sterling has performed applied research in parallel computing system structures, semantics and operation -- in industry, government labs and higher education. In 1997, he and his collaborators received the Gordon Bell Prize. Currently, Sterling's research focuses on the ParalleX execution model for extreme scale computing, with the goal of devising a new model of computation to guide the development of next-generation exascale computing systems. ParalleX is the conceptual centerpiece of the XPRESS project, sponsored by the US Department of Energy Office of Science X-stack program. Sterling holds six patents, and is co-author of six books.
