Kate Petersen Mace Brings Extensive Experience to ESnet’s Science Engagement Team

Kate Petersen Mace, who most recently served as director of External Partnership Management at Clemson University, is the newest member of ESnet’s Science Engagement Team.

In addition to her work at Clemson, Mace also served as chair of SCinet at the SC14 conference. The position was a two-year volunteer commitment to manage a diverse team of more than 100 network engineers from around the world to design and deploy a network to make the conference the best-connected site on Earth – for a week, until it’s all taken down.

“One of the most important qualifications Kate brings to the position is the breadth of her experience,” said Lauren Rotman, leader of the Science Engagement Team. “She has earned the respect of the technical community through her frontline experience in engineering and administering networks, including network architecture design and deployment. Kate has also proven herself to be an effective collaborator, forming partnerships and serving as an advocate for new technology in the community.”

During her 15 years at Clemson, Mace managed collaborations with commercial, government and academic partners, and also served as the Chief Operating Officer of CULR LLC, founded in 2007 to establish C-Light, South Carolina’s first facilities-based R&E network and is the sole Internet2 connector in South Carolina.

Although she’s only been at Berkeley Lab a few weeks, Mace already feels pretty comfortable in her surroundings.

“I’m lucky to have worked with many of the ESnet staff on projects over the past few years, and I really liked the people and their mission to advance science for DOE,” Mace said. “Ever since I started working with ESnet staff, I’ve wanted to work here.”

ESnet’s Science Engagement Team organizes meetings and workshops with scientists to learn about their research and data challenges, then offer tools and technologies to help them work more efficiently and effectively. “We work as a bridge between the technologists and the science community,” Rotman said.

In this vein, one of Mace’s first assignments with ESnet will be supporting the April workshop on bioinformatics, the latest meeting in ESnet’s CrossConnects Workshop series. Held in collaboration with Indiana University, the workshop series brings together network engineers and domain scientists, especially in areas with growing data needs, to help the researchers better understand and use the network’s capabilities.

“Working at Clemson was a wonderful experience but I was ready for a change. I wanted to go to a place where I could learn, face new challenges, and work with great people.” Mace said, “and I plan to be like a big sponge to soak up as much knowledge as I can from the expert staff at Berkeley Lab.”