Christian Presley
Executive Director of ACCRE
Christian has spent the past 25 years supporting higher education and research computing. For 13 years he led IT and Research Computing for the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, a joint research institute between multiple University of Maryland colleges, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). There he championed the growth of computing as a partner to science and research by working hand in hand with researchers to develop high performance computing (HPC), large scale parallel storage, software tools, and websites. His most recent work involved leading the launch of the newest supercomputing cluster for the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at NIH. At NIH, he opened up the computing environment tools beyond traditional HPC to include 3D accelerated remote workstations and 'white glove' service of scientific instrumentation. Christian is originally from Nashville and attended Hume-Fogg Academic HS and excited to be back at Vanderbilt where he got his first taste of higher education as high school student. He has a BS in Computer Engineering from Brigham Young University and a Masters of Engineering in Project Management from the University of Maryland. In a former life, he was a competitive ballroom dancer.
Lindsey Fox
Senior Director of Research Services Facilitation and Outreach
Lindsey’s responsibilities include helping to produce, manage, and implement programs and services geared to increase the success and support of research IT on campus. She also oversees strategic and tactical management and leadership for all research information services. She leads outreach efforts to Vanderbilt University researchers to enhance and expand Research IT for the campus while ensuring ACCRE managed resources meet the needs of the demanding research landscape. Lindsey holds an M.S. in Engineering Science with an emphasis in Geology from the University of Mississippi and is also wrapping up a Master of Information Technology degree at Virginia Tech, with certificates in cybersecurity.
Hunter Hagewood
Hunter Hagewood was named Director of Research Computing Operations at ACCRE in 2019. Prior to joining ACCRE, Hunter worked for over 10 years in the private sector, including director-level roles at Equian and Informatics Corporation of America. Hunter was also the founder and CTO of Nevoa Networks, one of the first commercially available cloud storage providers. Hunter has a master’s in information and library science from University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s in computer information systems from Lipscomb University.
Alan Tackett
Dr. Alan Tackett is the lead developer of LStore, a highly scalable filesystem that is used in production for the CMS Tier 2 project. As the technical director of ACCRE, Alan draws from his deep expertise in all things storage, networking, and computing to help guide and architect various aspects of the ACCRE environment. Alan has been with ACCRE since its inception in 2001.
Eric Appelt
Dr Eric Appelt is a Senior DevOps Engineer at ACCRE. Prior to joining the ACCRE staff, Eric studied experimental heavy ion physics as part of the CMS collaboration, and was a heavy user of the ACCRE cluster. Eric has industry experience in cloud infrastructure and web service software development, and is an active member of the Python community.
Matthew Heller
Matt is a graduate of Vanderbilt’s Engineering program and in fact he first worked for ACCRE as an intern in his undergraduate days prior to joining the team in a software developer position in 2009. Matt wears many hats, among them he is the lead network engineer and the primary for the ACCRE tape backup service. He also is involved in developing the LStore distributed storage system software and in automating system provisioning, management, and monitoring. When he can find the time he enjoys cooking, hiking, photography, and DIY projects ranging from electronics to woodworking.
Matthew Binkley
Mat has a BS in Physics from Austin Peay State University and four years studying black holes in grad school at Wake Forest. He also has a MBA, but hopes you’ll overlook it and like him anyway. He enjoys science, gardening, hiking, running, and dabbling in politics against his better judgement.
Warren Eckstein
Warren has been active in Information Technology since his first experience with the mainframe in Ames Ia. in the mid 1970’s. He served in the United States Navy as a Sonar Technician, worked in Geo-seismic exploration across the eastern United States, and attended The University of Alabama where he studied Television and Film Communications, Graphic Design and English. In 1996 Warren was instrumental in bringing Internet access to Pickens county Alabama. In 2006 He joined Vanderbilt University as a Network Operations Center Analyst where he worked to help ensure the stability and growth of the Data Center ACCRE resides in. In 2016 he came on board at ACCRE as a system administrator where he continues to work to ensure ACCRE systems work for you.
Scott Goethalls
Scott Goethals is a graduate from Eastern Michigan University with a degree in Information Assurance. Prior to joining the ACCRE team he has worked for several health care and I.T. companies. He joins ACCRE to bring his background in network security and system administration to help support the ACCRE cluster. When not at work Scott enjoys spending time with his wife and dogs.
Sai Medury
Sai Medury joined ACCRE in Nov 2021. He helps configure, test, and troubleshoot systems at ACCRE. He also works closely with the Centre for Structural Biology (CSB) and helps maintain CSB systems at ACCRE. He is currently completing his Ph.D. in Computational Science from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and has a Master of Software Engineering from Auburn University. In his spare time, Sai enjoys watching football and playing Pokemon Go.
Jacob Roberts
Jacob is a graduate of Tennessee Tech University and has been with ACCRE since 2013. His primary responsibilities are managing the cluster storage resources for ACCRE. He also manages custom gateways for research groups and maintaining Nagios, the monitoring software used by ACCRE. In his free time, Jacob enjoys swing dancing.
Wardell Alsup
Wardell Alsup was named Storage Systems Administrator at ACCRE in 2023. Prior to joining ACCRE, Wardell worked for over 15 years in the private sector, including director-level roles at Xsolis and Informatics Corporation of America. Wardell has a bachelor's in computer information systems from Middle Tennessee State University.
Prasanna Koirala
Prasanna Koirala joined ACCRE as a Research Software Engineer in April 2022. Prior to joining ACCRE, Prasanna worked for three years in the higher education sector as a part of the NASA-IMPACT Research Lab at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, both as a student and a full-time employee. Additionally, Prasanna has more than three years of experience in the software engineering sector. His expertise lies in software engineering, full-stack development, cloud engineering, and machine learning implementations. Prasanna holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Pulchowk Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. In his free time, Prasanna enjoys singing, hiking, and traveling.
Satkar Dhakal Satkar
Satkar joined ACCRE in February 2023 as a research software engineer. He completed his master’s degree in computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville while working as a Graduate Research Assistant for NASA IMPACT. His main responsibilities at ACCRE includes developing user facing interfaces to the cluster, technical consultation, and refactoring codebase to parallelize and optimize the high-performance computing workload. Beyond the realm of technology, Satkar finds joy in activities such as kayaking, hiking, 3D printing, and playing guitar.
Brandon Soubasis
Dr. Brandon Soubasis is a Senior Research Scientist at Vanderbilt University's ACCRE and the Center for Applied AI in Protein Dynamics. Brandon holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Vanderbilt University, where his research focused on particle physics for the CMS collaboration. His expertise lies in using AI, deep learning, and high-performance computing, to the advancement of AI applications in scientific research.
Michael McAllister
Michael McAllister is ACCRE’s Research Facilitator, responsible for onboarding new groups, ACCRE resource consultations, and outreach to stakeholders. Michael joined ACCRE in 2022 after spending more than 7 years in technical support and relationship management with VUIT. More than anything, he enjoys connecting with ACCRE customers and helping drive the University research mission forward. When he is not assisting customers at ACCRE, Michael enjoys spending time with family, pretending to be a good golfer, and kayaking the streams and rivers of middle Tennessee.
Patrick Bembry
Patrick Bembry is ACCRE’s Business Manager, responsible for the financial oversight of the Center. He manages the core’s billing, core-unit pricing, budget forecasting, asset management, and the purchase of capital equipment and software licenses. Patrick is a long-time Vanderbilt employee with multi-department experience in payroll administration, accounting, human resources, and sponsored research. When he isn’t at ACCRE Patrick enjoys working with his hands and learning new DIY skills, from drywall work to plumbing, and applying these skills to the renovation of his fifties-era house.
Samuel Ninchritz
Samuel Ninchritz joined ACCRE in June 2022 as a system administrator. Prior to joining ACCRE, Samuel received certifications for electronic repair and basic networking through the Army. Afterwards, he went on to receive his A.A.S. in cybersecurity. In his free time, Samuel enjoys spending time at home with is kids, playing games on his computer, and eating.
Andrew Melo
Dr. Andrew Melo joined ACCRE in 2016 after the completion of his PhD in Physics at Vanderbilt University. His doctoral thesis was performed with the CMS experiment at CERN, where he performed a search for supersymmetry. He is currently the lead administrator of the CMS Tier-2 site at Vanderbilt as well as the U.S. CMS facilities co-manager, responsible for the national CMS computing infrastructure. He is also responsible for ACCRE's big data infrastructure and is developing a prototype Machine Learning Training Facility.
Fenglai Liu
Fenglai Liu is an application developer at ACCRE. His primary responsibilities at ACCRE include managing software stack, helping the ACCRE users on variety of software and Slurm related issues etc. Prior to joining ACCRE staff, Fenglai had been working in computational chemistry field for years as a programmer. Fenglai is experienced with C++ and Fortran languages, and has a particular interest on the functional programming language like Scala. In his spare time Fenglai likes cooking traditional Chinese food, playing with his daughters and baby boy, watching movie and doing interval training exercises.