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Andy Grant
NVIDIA
Andy Grant is the Director of Supercomputing and Artificial Intelligence for the Higher Education and Research sector in the EMEA region at NVIDIA. He is responsible for driving the company's business activities in this market. His career in scientific computing spans more than three decades, having held similar positions at SIG/Cray, IBM, and Atos/Eviden. At the latter, he was responsible for leading and coordinating activities within the EuroHPC project, including the Vega supercomputer in Slovenia, pre-exascale systems in Spain and Italy, and the exascale system in Germany.
New Trends in Supercomputing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The presentation will cover trends and the latest developments in HPC and AI architectures, focusing on both hardware and software, and their impact on scientific computing. It will also address the use of digital twins and the concept of AI factories.
Tomislav Šarić
VERTIV
Tomislav Šarić is an experienced electrical engineer with an MBA from the University of Zagreb. He has built his career in key positions at leading technology and engineering companies such as SAP, EXOR, SPAN, and Emerson Network Power (now Vertiv). At Vertiv, he currently serves as the Sales Director for indirect business in the Central and Eastern Europe region, specializing in advanced cooling solutions for data centers. His expertise and leadership skills ensure that Vertiv's partners and customers receive strategic support and innovative solutions to optimize their performance and drive business success.
How to Become AI‑ready – Part 1
Artificial intelligence is founded on systems capable of processing vast amounts of data in the shortest possible time, closely tied to machine learning. These systems pose entirely new challenges for the data center support infrastructure. The presentation will highlight the challenges introduced by AI systems and general directions for designing centers that will host such systems.
Boštjan Lavuger, MSc.
NTR Engineering
Boštjan Lavuger is one of the leading experts in the design and construction of data centers in Slovenia. Over two decades of work in this field, he has participated as a consultant, designer, or project manager in the planning and implementation of more than thirty data centers at home and abroad. Among other projects, he was responsible for the design and management of the construction of new data centers for the supercomputers Meister and Vega. He is a partner at the Maribor-based NTR Engineering, where he has been the Technical Director since 2009. He is also active internationally, collaborating with top experts and leading companies in the industry, and lecturing at conferences. In recent years, he has been focusing intensively on the challenges posed to data centers by AI and high-performance computing. Together with his colleagues, he develops optimal solutions to efficiently adapt and upgrade existing infrastructure. He also plans, develops, and tests advanced systems and technologies for sixth-generation data centers.
How to Become AI‑ready – Part 2
Key challenges in implementing AI systems include managing high energy density, ensuring data center scalability, and maintaining the concurrent operations of traditional and AI systems. Modern data centers, which are not purpose-built exclusively for HPC or AI systems, face significant challenges in the coexistence of traditional IT systems and high-energy-density IT systems. These challenges are further intensified by the anticipated transformation of traditional systems into high-density systems, creating new dynamics in the lifecycle of data centers. This presentation will explore strategies for planning and implementing data centers to ensure scalability and adaptability for potential high-density systems.
Volodymyr Saviak
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
For more than 25 years, Volodymyr Saviak delivers IT infrastructure solutions on the Central Eastern European market, focusing on High Performance Computing, Big Data, Storage and recently Artificial Intelligence at Scale. Volodymyr is helping organizations understand how to build and implement cutting-edge technical computing solutions focused on highest performance and scalability. For the development of the First Ukrainian Supercomputer Center and the Ukrainian HPC community, he was awarded Ukraine’s Parliament Highest Honor Award.
IT Infrastructure Solutions for Enterprise AI
HPE delivers most of the high performance servers for AI and HPC in the world, supporting its customers with reliable solutions. During this presentation we will talk about HPE servers, storage, clusters portfolio for AI in enterprise with several success stories and solutions discussion.
Jean-Pierre PANZIERA
Eviden
Jean-Pierre Panziera the Chief Technology Director for High Performance Computing at Eviden, an Atos business. He joined Bull, now part of Eviden, in 2009, and is responsible for the development of the HPC/AI high-end systems. He started his career at Elf-Aquitaine as a research developer for seismic processing. After a couple of startups in the Silicon Valley, he worked for 20 years at SGI where he held various position in the USA and in Europe, first as an HPC application specialist and later as Chief Engineer. He is also the Chairman of the ETP4HPC association which represents the HPC ecosystem in Europe and he is a member of EuroHPC Joint Undertaking Governing Board. Jean-Pierre holds an engineer degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris.
Eviden AI Solutions
Artificial Intelligence has become the new universal IT tool. AI solutions at scale for learning, fine-tuning or inference workflows defines new challenges and requires new solutions for systems Hardware architecture and Software environment.
Marc Simon
Hewlet Packard Enterprise
Master of Engineering in Technical computing and computer science (Polytech Paris), '88, Marc Simon began his career as a developer of real-time simulators. He joined the service company Marben and worked for Thomson as a developer, Unix system programmer and project manager for real-time visual simulators. Between 1989 and 1992 he was part of the simulation team for the French Rafale airborne radar RBE2 as a developer of visual and real-time hardware in the loop simulations. In early 1993, he joined Silicon Graphics, world leader in high-end graphics solutions, as presales engineer, expert in visual simulation in real-time environment. Between 1995 and 1999, he was presales manager of the High-end graphics department where he contributed in designing and providing custom visual simulators for defense and automotive Industries. Between 2000 and 2010, he endorsed the role of Technical director for SGI In France in charge of presales teams for Graphics, HPC, enterprise servers and storage. He began the HPC technical in charge of large HPC procurement In Industry, research centers and higher education in France. In early 2011, he was Technical director for southern Europe at SGI, In charge of presales, professional services and delivery. He was appointed as Senior Principal System Engineer In 2012 and participate to future supercomputer design with the R&D team. Early 2016 he joined Atos as Global HPC presales manager, in charge of supporting worldwide HPC, Quantum and AI projects. He was also nominated Atos Senior Expert in 2017. Mid 2022 he joined the EMEA Supercomputing organization at HPE as HPC Technical advisor.
Why cooling matters more than ever in HPC&AI
In this presentation, we will explore the reasons behind the evolution of cooling techniques for supercomputer infrastructures for HPC and AI. A brief overview of the solutions available at HPE and their impact on data centers will provide insight into the constraints and possibilities available to computing centers.
Andrea Lazzaro
Rittal RCS Cooling Solutions S.r.l.
Andrea Lazzaro, an accomplished engineer specialized in industrial and IT air-conditioning, began his career shortly after earning his Mechanical Engineering degree-with a focus on Thermal Engineering - from Padova University and obtaining his state qualification in 1999. He first honed his skills in technical support at BlueBox Group, where his hands-on involvement with diverse cooling systems laid the foundation for his subsequent career. At Emerson Network Power, Andrea quickly advanced from a role in Technical Sales Support to become the Product Manager for Chillers, where he was responsible for comprehensive market analysis, product definition, and the technical oversight of both standard and large-scale projects.
Building on this experience, Andrea moved to Kelvin Srl (company part of Rittal Group), initially serving as a Key Account Manager and later expanding his responsibilities as Sales Department Manager and Chiller Product Manager. In these roles, he effectively bridged operational processes and coordinated critical interfaces between Kelvin and Rittal GmbH. Since 2014, Andrea has been an integral part of Rittal GmbH, first as Product and Sales Manager for IT-cooling devices - overseeing market launches and global technical support - and, from 2019 onward, as Responsible Product Manager IT Cooling. In this capacity, he leads his team in defining product roadmaps and spearheading innovations that meet the dynamic needs of modern IT and industrial air-conditioning applications.
Fluent in Italian, English, and Spanish, with a working knowledge of German, Andrea’s excellent interpersonal and organizational skills have been refined through years of working in multicultural, multinational environments. Andrea Lazzaro is a worldwide recognized expert in the development and marketing of advanced cooling solutions for data centers and industrial environments.
Rittal Direct Liquid Cooling Solutions
This presentation provides an overview of Rittal’s Direct Liquid Cooling (DLC) solutions, highlighting the common design concepts across products and the different solutions tailored to specific requirements. We will explore the technical aspects of DLC, its benefits in high-performance environments, and how it enhances energy efficiency and thermal management in modern data centers. Attendees will gain insights into the key features, applications, and strategic advantages of Rittal’s advanced cooling technologies.
Assoc. Prof. Slavko Žitnik, PhD
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Computer and Information Science
Slavko Žitnik is a Vice-dean for Education at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty for Computer and Information Science. He is also a president of Slovenian Society INFORMATIKA, president of Slovenian Association for Language Technologies, and member of supervisory board at AKOS. He is researching in the broader field of natural language processing, more precisely he is interested into semantic web, information retrieval, information extraction, data spaces and information systems. His active collaborations include researchers from University of Belgrade, University of South Florida and Harvard University. He was also awarded a silver sign of Slovenian Society INFORMATIKA for his contributions to development of informatics in Slovenia.
Natural Language Processing Technologies: From Science to Industry
The presentation will spotlight current research in the field of natural language processing, conducted by the Laboratory for Data Technologies at the Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana with a focus on improving the status of the Slovenian language in the digital environment. It will present examples of how the results of these studies are transitioning into industry through the development of specialized solutions (e.g. speech technologies, semantic technologies, data spaces, …)
In his lecture, he will highlight current research in the field of natural language processing, with a focus on improving the position of the Slovenian language in the digital environment. This research involves the Laboratory for Data Technologies at the Faculty of Computer.
Marko Grobelnik
Jožef Stefan Institute / UNESCO IRCAI
Marko Grobelnik is a researcher in artificial intelligence at the Jožef Stefan Institute, co-founder of UNESCO's International Research Center on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI), and the executive director of Quintelligence.com. Marko is the co-author of several books, a co-founder of multiple startups, and has been involved in over 100 EU-funded research projects across various fields of AI. He represents Slovenia in OECD AI (ONE AI), the Council of Europe’s Committee on AI (CAHAI), the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), and NATO (DARB). In 2016, he became Slovenia's Digital Ambassador to the European Commission.
Future AI challenges that will require HPC
Details to follow.
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