Dr. Piyush Mehrotra an expert in HPC systems, retired in December 2023 from NASA Ames Research Center, having served as the Chief of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division since 2013. As the Division Chief, he oversaw the full range of high-performance computing services for NASA’s premier supercomputing center including in the areas of large-scale simulations, visualization, AI/ML and cloud computing. In addition, he also managed NAS’s modeling and simulation research and development efforts focusing on several domains including computational aerosciences, risk assessment, and heliophysics, which are critical for numerous NASA missions. With over 40 years of R&D experience in Computer Science, working at various research organizations, he has published over 130 articles in journals and conferences on parallel programming languages, compilers and runtime systems for parallel and distributed environments, benchmarking and more recently on infrastructure to support science data analysis pipelines in hybrid environments across on-premises and cloud resources.

Dr. Rupak Biswas is the Director of Exploration Technology at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and has held this Senior Executive Service (SES) position since January 2016. In this role, he is in charge of planning, directing, and coordinating the technology development and operational activities of the organization that comprises of advanced supercomputing, human systems integration, intelligent systems, and entry systems technology. The directorate consists of over 900 staff with an annual budget of $275 million and includes two of NASA’s critical and consolidated infrastructures: arc jet testing facility and supercomputing facility. Dr. Biswas received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Rensselaer in 1991 and has been at NASA ever since. During this time, he has received several awards, including the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal (2006), the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (2009 and 2018), and the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive (2021). He is an internationally recognized expert in high performance computing and has published more than 170 technical papers, received many Best Paper awards, edited several journal special issues, and given numerous lectures around the world.

Earl Joseph is Executive Director for Hyperion Research and the HPC User Forum. He has 30 years of experience in the computer industry with a focus on technical computing and high performance computing. He conducts research and provides consulting within the United States, European and Asia-Pacific markets for technical servers, supercomputers, grids, visualization and clustering. This research includes market sizing, market share analysis, forecasts, technology assessment, and vendor analysis. Earlier, he led marketing and strategic planning functions for four major U.S. corporations; Cray, UNISYS, SGI and Concurrent. He was instrumental in winning an international anti-dumping case on supercomputers and contributed research and recommendations contributing to the renewed emphasis on supercomputing in the U.S. President’s 2006 state-of-the-union address. He earned a Ph.D. in the strategic management of high technology companies from the University of Minnesota.

Mike Bernhardt brings more than three decades of leadership and service to the high-performance computing (HPC) community. He is a widely respected strategic engagement, communications, and market-relations executive with deep experience spanning industry, government, and emerging technology ecosystems.

His senior-level background includes strategic and operational leadership roles at Multiflow Computer and Intel Corporation’s Supercomputing Systems Division. Mike is also recognized as the former owner and CEO of multiple strategic communications and marketing agencies, including the award-winning Bernhardt Agency—an early pioneer of the virtual agency model—which represented more than a dozen HPC and advanced-technology firms between 1994 and 2016.

Most notably, Mike served as the senior communications lead for the U.S. Department of Energy’s seven-year, $1.8 billion Exascale Computing Project, supporting one of the most ambitious scientific computing initiatives ever undertaken. He previously served as Communications Chair for the ACM/IEEE SC Conference (SC09) and continues to contribute as an active volunteer with the SC communications committee.

Mike currently serves as CEO and Chief Strategist of Team Libra, LLC, where he advises technology-driven organizations on strategic positioning, stakeholder engagement, and market development.

Paul Buerger, HPC industry expert, spent most of his career at The Ohio State University and Ohio Supercomputer Center. During those 40 years, he worked with everything from minicomputers to mainframes to vector supercomputers to HPC clusters. He led teams supporting these systems and various computer networks. Dr. Buerger is the author or co-author of several papers and presentations dealing with astronomy and with digital data management. His current interests include parallel file systems and trying to understand what is big about Big Data. He is a member of IEEE and ACM.

Simon Burbidge is a leading member of the HPC community in the UK, with a long and highly successful career in HPC in both industry and research. He is also a consultant for HPC and Research Computing in University, Research and technical environments. Simon is RSE team leader at DiRAC, working with the RSE group on DiRAC projects and benchmarking and performance monitoring/measurement. He supports DiRAC developments in energy management, data storage and future software development for pre-exascale and new technology. Simon was previously Director of Advanced Computing Research Centre at the University of Bristol and HPC Lead at Imperial College London, with earlier industry experience in the seismic industry and with a leading computer supplier to the education sector in the UK. He maintains a keen interest in technology and methods for computing in research. Collaborations and joint ventures with vendors and developers and with research communities form a central part of his work. This has included ARM technologies, interconnects, storage and software development. Simon participates in community and standards groups, including the HPC-SIG and CIUK and international meetings such as ISC and SC and special interest groups and BoFs such as parallel programming and scheduling. He champions diversity in the community, including Women in HPC and in outreach groups and training and education programmes.

Douglas Kothe is the Associate Laboratories Director (ALD) for Advanced Science and Technology and Chief Research Officer at Sandia National Laboratories.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a Master of Science and a Doctorate in Nuclear Engineering from Purdue University. Prior to joining Sandia in June 2023, Dr. Kothe spent more than 38 years in multidisciplinary research and development organizations and in computer and computational sciences programs focused on energy, manufacturing, and national security.

Dr. Kothe held several technical program management positions over a 20-year span at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He began his career as a graduate student at LANL in 1985. After 2 years at LANL, he then ventured to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1988, he moved back to LANL where he spent the next 18 years. He then joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where he was ALD for Computing and Computational Sciences. He also served as director of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Exascale Computing Project.

Dr. Kothe held several roles at ORNL prior to joining Sandia. He was the Director of Science at the National Center for Computational Sciences (2006-2010) and the Director of DOE’s first Energy Innovation Hub, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors from 2010 2015. In addition, he drove the creation, application, and deployment of the innovative Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications, a 2016 R&D 100 Award winner that offered a technology step change for the U.S. nuclear energy industry.

Dr. Kothe has co-authored over 90 publications, including journal articles, technical and program reports, and presentations given at a variety of conferences.

Steve Finn provides technology assessment and telecommunications support services for a community of HPC users. His background includes vectorization and parallelization of application codes, benchmarking, and HPC system acquisitions. He has performed detailed requirements assessments, identified overall project risks, and created mitigation plans. He has prepared multiple alternative scenarios for data center consolidation, and has developed policies to provide a consistent user environment across heterogeneous systems at multiple HPC centers. Steve is a past Chairman of the HPC User Forum Steering Committee.

Sharan Kalwani is an HPC Industry Specialist currently working in the Manufacturing & Mobility arena. Prior to his current diverse assignments, he has spent considerable time in various domains (e.g. Institute of Cyber-Enabled Research/High Performance Computing Center@Industry Expert; Fermi National Accelerator Lab; Subject Matter Expert/Lead in the UberCloud project; Research Computing Manager at KAUST; HPC Manager at General Motors; HPC tech support w/ SGI; Analyst in Charge (AIC) on Site w/ Cray Research Inc; Senior Scientific Analyst at Michigan Cancer Foundation; Telecom analyst w/ Datamation, Dubai/UAE and started life as a technical engineer with DCM Data Products, India). With 35+ years of experience in scientific and technical computing, He is well versed in managing global engineering HPC centers and volunteers his time with the IEEE, where he is the current Chair of Southeastern Michigan Section. Sharan is a member of the ACM, ASEI, SAE, USENIX/LISA, AAAS and the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was one of the original founders of the michigan!/usr/group (mug.org) back in 1986. He also runs the popular discussion group ‘Innovative Uses of HPC’ on LinkedIn. He has dual degrees in Engineering and Computer Science and enjoys teaching as an adjunct faculty at several universities in Michigan. He is published author on cybersecurity and is working on his next couple of books.

Elizabeth L’Heureux is the head of the High Performance Computing team at bp. Elizabeth received a B.Sc. in Physics from McGill University in 2002 and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Toronto in 2007. She joined bp as a research geophysicist in 2007, where she made extensive use of HPC resources as a specialist in seismic wavefield simulation, leading a program to develop and deploy innovative modeling technologies for geophysical research. In 2021 she took on a role managing bp’s HPC group, responsible for the team of systems administrators and software developers maintaining the high performance computing center. She is accountable for long-term planning and strategic acquisitions of HPC technology in line with delivering value to the subsurface imaging, applied sciences and low carbon energy research groups in bp.

Alex Loddoch is the Technology Strategist for High Performance Computing at Chevron, where he leads enterprise-wide research and development in advanced computing. His work spans the evaluation and adoption of emerging hardware architectures, the design of large-scale HPC systems, and the deployment of novel, proprietary computational methods across multiple scientific and engineering disciplines. Alex holds a Master’s degree in Physics and a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Münster, Germany. He brings more than 25 years of experience in high performance computing across academia and industry, covering the full HPC spectrum, from system administration and applications through architecture and strategy. He has been a Chevron Fellow since 2023 and currently serves as Vice Chair of the Chevron Fellows.

David Martin is a Science Engagement Engineer for the Energy Science Network at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he works with scientists to harness ESnet’s unique capabilities and with ESnet staff to understand the needs of science communities.

Before Berkeley Lab, David was Manager, Industry Partnerships and Outreach at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Laboratory where he worked with industrial users to employ high performance computing and take advantage of the transformational capabilities of modeling, simulation and AI.

Prior to joining Argonne, David led IBM’s integration of internet standards, grid and cloud computing into offerings from IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. Before IBM, David managed networks and built network services for the worldwide high-energy physics community at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. David began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories, doing paradigm-changing work in software engineering and high-speed networking.

David received a BS from Purdue University and an MS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both in Computer Science.

Brendan McGinty is Director of Industry at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he leads strategic partnerships with industry focused on high-performance computing (HPC), artificial intelligence, and advanced digital infrastructure. In this role, he directs the NCSA Industry program, building collaborations with leading global companies to apply large-scale computing, data science, and AI to real-world challenges across sectors including healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and financial services.

McGinty also co-founded the Center for AI Innovation at Illinois and previously served as Executive Director of the Center for Digital Agriculture. Over the course of his career, he has helped create and scale multiple industry–academic partnerships and innovation initiatives spanning HPC, AI, and digital transformation.

Stéphane Requena is chief information officer of GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif). GENCI is a legal entity taking the form of a «société civile» under French law, owned 49 % by the French State represented by the Ministry for Higher Education and Research, 20 % by CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission), 20 % by CNRS, 10 % by universities and 1% by INRIA. Created in 2007, GENCI’s mission is to implement and ensure the coordination of the major equipments of the national HPC centres, by providing funding and by assuming ownership; promote the organization of a European HPC area and participate in its achievements. GENCI is also the French representative in PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe). As a PRACE board member, Stéphane Requena set up R&D collaborations in order to optimize HPC facilities and to anticipate novel technologies. He also promotes simulation and high performance computing in both fundamental and industrial research.

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult Michael M. Resch is dean of the faculty for energy-process and biotechnology of the University of Stuttgart, director of the High Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), the Department for High Performance Computing, and the Information Center (IZUS), all at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. He was an invited plenary speaker at SC’07. He chairs the board of the German Gauss Center for Supercomputing (GCS) and serves on the advisory councils for Triangle Venture Capital Group and several foundations. He is on the advisory board of the Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing (PC2). Michael Resch holds a degree in Technical Mathematics from the Technical University of Graz, Austria and a Ph.D. in engineering from the University of Stuttgart. He was an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Houston and was awarded honorary doctorates by the National Technical University of Donezk (Ukraine) and the Russian Academy of Science.

Pawsey is one of two, Tier-1, High Performance Computing facilities in Australia, with a primary function to accelerate scientific research for the benefit of the nation and to support Australia’s participation in the Square Kilometre Array. Pawsey is undergoing a $70m technology refresh and Mark leads a team of 50 HPC, data and visualisation experts, supporting over 2,000 researchers through 400+ projects using Pawsey’s advanced computation and data systems. 

An experienced R&D and technology executive, prior to joining Pawsey, Mark held leadership roles in innovation and industry engagement at The University of WA and was a former CEO of the WA Energy Research Alliance – an industry research joint venture between Australia’s national science organisation, CSIRO, universities, Chevron, Shell and Woodside Energy.  He also chairs the Board of All Saints’ College and its Foundation, and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Australian Institute of Management. Mark is a member of CEO’s for Gender Equity, graduated with distinction from his MBA program, and completed graduate studies in governance, educational administration, energy and resource policy.

Steve Pritchard, former Senior Executive with over 30 years of service within the U.S. Department of Defense, brings leadership and technical experience in technologies ranging from high performance computing systems to embedded real-time systems, systems architecture/engineering, large-scale analytics, and mission-management on processing systems deployed worldwide.  As Senior Technical Director and Enterprise Architect for High Performance Computing Solutions led the strategic definition, advanced technology investment strategy, architecture and design of HPC technologies and systems in support of critical processing needs.  Following retirement from federal service, he served as a Senior Advisor at U.S. Cyber Command and established a consulting firm.   As a consultant, he provides technical and strategic consulting to entities delivering advanced, differentiated computing and analytics.  He works with a diverse range of clients covering the breadth of venture capital, federal sector, and start-ups to established commercial entities, also serving on the Advisory Board of several firms.  Degreed in Electrical and Computer Engineering, he has a proven ability to leverage innovation, conceptualizing solutions for complex large-scale operational challenges and converting these into high-quality system deliveries. He is a member of ACM.  In addition to the HPC User Forum, he also serves on the Chesapeake Large Scale Analytics Conference committee.

Zhengji Zhao is a member of the Advanced Technologies Group at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She has nearly 20 years of experience in high-performance computing (HPC), with a broad portfolio that includes supporting materials science and chemistry applications, participating in system procurements, developing workload analysis tools, and porting applications to many-core and GPU-based systems. She has led the development of checkpoint/restart standards for HPC production workloads and specializes in power and energy analsyis and modeling to improve data center operational efficiency. She has authored more than 40 publications in these areas. Zhengji holds a Ph.D. in computational physics from New York University.

Keith Gray is the VP for Computational Science and Engineering at TotalEnergies. Prior to joining TotalEnergies, Keith was an HPC Advisor at Intel and the Director of HPC and Technical Computing at bp, leading the High Performance Computing team for 22 years. The team grew computing power by over 200,000 times in this period, designed and constructed the bp Center for High Performance Computing, and enabled significant Seismic Imaging research breakthroughs. He has over 40 years of experience in the oil and gas industry. After graduating from Virginia Tech, Keith started his career as a seismic processing geophysicist at Western Geophysical. Keith was recognized by HPCWire’s “People to Watch” in 2006. He is on the Organizing Committee for the Energy HPC Conference by the Rice Ken Kennedy Institute.