REvolution Computing Names Robert Gentleman and Donald Nickelson to Board

Co-creator of "R" statistical language, former president of the PaineWebber Group join Norman Nie's effort to lead REvolution's growth as the new standard in predictive analytics for commercial users

Palo Alto, California – January 25, 2009 - REvolution Computing, the leading commercial provider of software and support for the open source “R” statistical computing language, announced the appointment of R co-creator Robert Gentleman and investment-banking veteran Donald Nickelson to its board of directors. Gentleman and Nickelson join directors Norman Nie and Basil Horangic and observers Lisa Lambert and Patrick Walsh on the REvolution board.

REvolution Computing president and CEO Norman Nie said, “Welcoming Robert and Donald as part of our leadership team is a tremendous boon to REvolution Computing. As the co-creator of R, Robert Gentleman will help strengthen our commitment to working hand-in-hand with the R community. Donald brings tremendous experience and expertise from the financial services industry. This is an exciting time for our company, and we are delighted they have joined the REvolution team.”

Gentleman has been an innovator in the statistical computing world for more than 20 years. In 1996, he and fellow professor Ross Ihaka at the University of Aukland in New Zealand released the R code as a free software package after five years of its development. The goal was to offer technology better suited for their statistics students, who needed to analyze data and produce graphical models of the information. Today, R is used by more than 2 million people both in academic and commercial settings, quickly becoming the de facto standard for predictive analytics.

In addition to his role on the REvolution Computing board, Gentleman has been a senior director in bioinformatics at Genentech (a member of the Roche Group) since September. In his academic career, he has received multiple research grants and has published more than two dozen articles on statistical computing. He holds a BS in mathematics from the University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington.

“REvolution has made important contributions to the R community and to the commercial use of R on an enterprise level,” Gentleman said. “I am eager to help Norman and the team expand the role R has in the commercial world and to help bring high-quality analytic and graphical software to many new areas of application.”

Donald Nickelson has been the director of First Advantage, a risk management consultancy, since 2003. In addition to his role at First Advantage, he serves as vice chairman and director of Harbour Group Industries, a leveraged buy-out firm.

Nickelson is also director of the Adolor Corporation, where he is a member of the compensation and audit committees. In addition, he is on the advisory board of Celtic Pharmaceutical Holdings and also serves as chairman of the advisory board of Celtic Therapeutics.

Previously, Nickelson served as president of PaineWebber Group, an investment banking and brokerage firm, as well as serving on the board of numerous public and private companies.

Said Nickelson: “Financial institutions have been early adopters of REvolution’s ground-breaking products for a very good reason: they handle tremendous amounts of mission critical data in record time, allowing for better, more efficient and more effective modeling. REvolution is a company on a fantastic trajectory, and I am thrilled to be joining Norman, the esteemed board, and the terrific management team in the effort to make REvolution the new standard in commercial predictive analytics.”

About REvolution Computing

REvolution Computing is the leading commercial provider of software and support for the open source “R” statistical computing language.  Our products, including REvolution R and REvolution R Enterprise, enable statisticians, scientists and others to create superior predictive models and derive meaning from large sets of mission-critical data in record time.  REvolution Computing works closely with the R community to incorporate the latest developments in open source R and with our clients to support their efforts to produce groundbreaking innovations in life sciences, financial services, defense technology and other industries where high-level analytics are crucial to success.

The product names “RPE,” “RPro,” “ParallelR,” “REvolution R” and “REvolution R Enterprise” are trademarks of REvolution Computing.

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