Dr. Mark S. Staveley (CompSci ‘97) has been working with Microsoft and NVIDIA to supercharge Microsoft’s Cloud.On Tuesday September 29th, Microsoft and NVIDIA announced that Microsoft will offer NVIDIA® GPU-enabled professional graphics applications and accelerated computing capabilities to customers worldwide through a new N-Series class of Virtual Machines on its cloud platform, Microsoft Azure.
Dr. Staveley (CompSci ’97) visiting on campus with the Director of the School of Computing, Professor Akl
“This is a really exciting time for the Microsoft Cloud platform” says Mark, “Microsoft Azure will now be able to offer customers solutions in the area of virtualized high-end graphics as well as high-performance GPU accelerated workloads.”
When Mark was at Queen’s, he started in Applied Science, and then after a short detour in J-Section he found his way to the School of Computing. Mark tells us that he has always been thankful for the great professors and exciting projects here at Queen’s. In fact, he was impressed by the faculty so much that he became an Adjunct Lecturer for the School of Computing from 2002-2004 teaching 1st and 2nd year classes.
Dr. Staveley (CompSci ’97) visiting on campus with the Director of the School of Computing, Professor Akl
“I’ve always appreciated the warmth and integrity that is part of the School of Computing at Queen’s” says Mark “The school not only does fantastic research, but they also genuinely care about their students – something which you can see very clearly throughout the school.”
Mark was here visiting on campus as part of a recruiting delegation from Microsoft. Mark tells us how Queen’s reputation in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Math has gotten the attention of Microsoft.
We then asked Mark to tell us why Microsoft is looking to Queen’s for its next generation of engineers and program managers. Mark said that consistency has a lot to do with it. Year after year, Microsoft has continued to find great people from Queen’s who want to come work on state-of-the-art projects.
Mark notes how the School of Computing at Queen’s provides a unique advantage with its interdisciplinary programs – students already have experience with challenging their minds and skills in different areas, examples of which include the Bio-Computing program and the Cognitive Science program with the School of Computing.
We are excited to see how Microsoft has taken notice of the students who are coming out of Queen’s Computing, and we are thrilled to see how Mark is adding a little bit of Queen’s magic to the cloud.