Professor Peter Taylor appointed as VLSCI Director

Computational scientist Professor Peter R Taylor has been appointed as the director of the University of Melbourne-led Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative. Taylor is currently the chief scientist at the Centre for Scientific Computing of the University of Warwick in the UK. Taylor, who will take up his appointment in July, will also hold an adjunct appointment in the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. Taylor moved to California in 1985, first working at NASA Ames Research Centre and then at the San Diego Supercomputer Centre, where he became deputy director, as well as a professor of chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He also served as chief applications scientist of the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, a multi-institutional collaboration in the US. Since 2002 he has held the Royal Society Wolfson Professorship of Chemistry while in his role as chief scientist at the CSC. The Victorian government and the university established the $100 million VLSCI in 2008 to strengthen the research capabilities and outcomes of Victorian life sciences research.