Peter Braam

Peter Braam
Born	Peter J. Braam
Alma mater	Utrecht University (1984) University of Oxford (1987)
Known for	Lustre File System, Intermezzo File System, Coda File System
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics, Computer science
Institutions	University of Oxford – Wolfson College, Merton College and St Catherine's College University of Utah NWO – Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research Utrecht University Carnegie Mellon University
Thesis	Magnetic Monopoles and Hyperbolic Three-manifolds (1987)
Doctoral advisor	Michael Atiyah
Website	www.braam.io

Peter J. Braam is a Dutch-American computer scientist, mathematician and entrepreneur known for his contributions to large-scale computing systems. he has held academic positions at institutions such as the University of Utah, the University of Oxford and Carnegie Mellon University. In the industry, Braam is recognized for creating the Lustre parallel file system, widely used in high-performance computing (HPC) environments.

Early life and education

Braam was born in Utrecht, Netherlands. He completed his undergraduate studies at Utrecht University in 1984. He pursued doctoral research under the supervision of Sir Michael Atiyah at the University of Oxford, earning his DPhil in 1987 with a thesis titled Magnetic Monopoles and Hyperbolic Three-manifolds.

Academic Career

Following his doctorate, Braam became a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford, and a C&C Huygens Fellow of the Netherlands Science Foundation. He later served as a tenured associate professor at the University of Utah and as a university lecturer and tutorial fellow at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. His research during this period encompassed differential topology, gauge theories, conformal field theories, algebraic geometry, and partial differential equations.

Industry Contributions

Transitioning to the computing industry, Braam joined Carnegie Mellon University as a Senior Systems Scientist, where he led the Coda project and developed the InterMezzo (file system). In 1999, he introduced the Lustre (file system), an open-source parallel distributed file system designed for supercomputing applications. Lustre has been adopted by numerous top-tier supercomputers and is available as a service in Amazon Web Services. Braam founded or co-founded six startup companies, with four of them having their assets acquired. He has held executive roles at companies including Turbolinux, Sun Microsystems, and Xyratex. His work on Lustre and other storage solutions has significantly impacted the HPC community.

Recent Activities

From 2013 to 2018 Braam has collaborated with the University of Cambridge on the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope project, focusing on data-intensive computing challenges. He has also served as a consultant to partners in the founding committee of Horizon 2020 and the European Processor Initiative. He was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford from 2019-2025, and at Waseda University from 2022. His research interests include programming languages, parallelism, storage, and the application of machine learning in scientific contexts.

Philanthrophy

Braam has endowed the Peter J. Braam Junior Research Fellowship and Graduate Scholarship in Human Wellbeing at Merton College, Oxford. These initiatives support early-career researchers and contribute to studies aimed at improving human wellbeing.

Selected publications

• Braam, P. J.; Donaldson, S. K. (1995). "Floer's work on instanton homology, knots and surgery". The Floer Memorial Volume. Birkhäuser Basel. pp. 195–256. doi:10.1007/978-3-0348-9217-9_10. ISBN 978-3-0348-9948-2.
• Braam, P.J.; Duistermaat, J.J. (December 1993). "Normal forms of real symmetric systems with multiplicity". Indagationes Mathematicae. 4 (4): 407–421. doi:10.1016/0019-3577(93)90011-M.
• Braam, Peter J.; Maciocia, Antony; Todorov, Andrey (December 1992). "Instanton moduli as a novel map from tori to K3-surfaces". Inventiones Mathematicae. 108 (1): 419–451. Bibcode:1992InMat.108..419B. doi:10.1007/BF02100613. S2CID 17896374.

Awards and recognition

• 1999 LinuxWorld, Editors Choice Award for Coda File System (best data management software)
• 1999 Best Paper, Systems, O'Reilly Open Source Convention, (InterMezzo)
• 1994–1995 Special Lectureship, University of Oxford
• 1993 Royal Society Exchange Fellowship to visit UBC, Canada
• 1986 Wolfson College, Oxford, Graduate Scholarship
• 1985 British Council and Foreign Office graduate scholarship
• 1984 Outstanding Research Award, University of Utrecht