NCI Director Professor Sean Smith has had his position as Director extended by The Australian National University for five years following his initial five-year contract. Since the start of his tenure as Director, Professor Smith has overseen the procurement and commissioning of the world-class Gadi supercomputer, and helped build closer relationships between NCI, universities, national research agencies, government and industry.

Professor Smith says, "I am looking forward to continuing to build NCI as the leading facility in Australia for high-performance computing and data science. As we move into new methods of computational science including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and into new disciplines including bioinformatics and computational economics, it is critical for us to build close connections between NCI and our vast network of collaborators and research partners, here and overseas."

"NCI has an important role in underpinning and enabling significant portions of the national research infrastructure ecosystem and some of the most important priority science disciplines in the country, including our internationally recognised climate and weather scientists and geoscience community. I look forward to working with all members of the Australian research landscape to deliver on the immense potential of high-performance computing, data and AI."