Meet the Unflinchingly Diverse Tony Baylis

Currently director for the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Office of Strategic Diversity and Inclusion Programs, Tony Baylis has devoted more than three decades to building partnerships and collaborations that exemplify the tenets of DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. His efforts have helped broaden representation within the national laboratory complex by opening doors to those once excluded due to their race, ethnicity, gender, and/or gender identity. While strides have been made to address DEI overall, the professional technology sector to date remains among the most homogeneous (up to 70% white reported in some surveys¹).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Baylis, as SC23’s Inclusivity Co-Chair (with Raquell Holmes), seeks to extend the connections he has long fostered between underrepresented communities, government, academia, non-profits, and industry to the SC Conference. Part of this has entailed addressing how and why people are introduced to high-performance computing (HPC) and getting them to realize there are opportunities for everyone to find their niche in the HPC community. While growing attendance and participation at SC23 will be one measure of the conference’s success, Baylis would like Denver to welcome an even more “global” crowd that reflects the diversity and potential of the still-evolving HPC community.

Q&A with Tony

Get to know Tony Baylis and why he is happy to say, “I am HPC.”

Q: What single event most made you realize you wanted a career in HPC/computing?

Baylis: The single event that made me realize I wanted a career in the field was meeting the Visualization Team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. The group was so close, and we got to do some amazing work together. Our Director, Dr. Larry Smarr, supported our ideas and gave us a place to be really creative in this field.

Q: What do you consider your biggest contribution to the HPC/computing community?

Baylis: I have a couple of contributions. One was working with the scientists and researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois to visualize their research. The second contribution was working with Jan Cuny, Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Raquell Holmes, and the SC Steering Committee to create a new program called Broader Engagement that provided opportunities for women, Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian students to be exposed to HPC at the SC Conference.

Q: What would you like to see change about, within, or among the HPC/computing community?

Baylis: I would like HPC to become a more diverse community with representation from around the world.

Inclusivity at SC

¹ The State of DEI in Tech 2022 (report). Build In, 2023.