Summary
Alper Kinaci is a strategic leader in research computing with a decade of experience building and scaling high-performance computing services for academic and national lab environments. Currently Manager of Research Computing Support Services at Northwestern University, he has a strong track record of improving HPC user experience, deploying efficient schedulers, and expanding team capacity through mentorship and student-led contributions. His background as a computational materials scientist and postdoc at Argonne informs a rare combination of deep domain expertise—DFT, genetic algorithms, and high-throughput simulation—with practical infrastructure delivery, including cloud and DOE resource integrations. He routinely translates complex research needs into funded compute allocations and training programs, having created satellite XSEDE training sites and new workshops on CUDA, MPI, Slurm, and more. Colleagues rely on him to bridge research, IT, and administration, turning computational capability into measurable research impact.
10 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
Master’s Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Master’s Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at Middle East Technical University (METU)
Bachelor’s Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Valedictorian, Bachelor’s Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Valedictorian at Middle East Technical University
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Materials Science and Engineering, Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University
Turkish, English