HPC-AI Society 2026 Annual Technology Event
Register Now!
This year’s Annual Society of HPC Professionals Technology Event is a don’t miss event! We have a great lineup of speakers from the HPC & AI community.
It will once again be held at the beautiful Shell Woodcreek campus. There will also be a virtual option for those who cannot attend in person.
Join now for $60 – just $10 more for full year membership plus many other benefits. Students can join for free.
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Agenda
| 8:00am | Venue opens | Registration, breakfast, networking, sponsor exhibits (in-person only) |
| 9:00am | Welcome and opening remarks Doug Norton, President HPC Society | Welcome and overview of the day, including important facility information. |
| 9:15am | Morning keynote address –Answers to Last Year’s Five Questions: Defining the New HPC Addison Snell, Co-Founder & CEO Intersect360 Research | In last year’s keynote, Addison Snell laid out “Five Big Questions for HPC-AI in 2025,” including a redefined methodology, scope of research, and objectives for the HPC-AI Leadership Organization (HALO). Now Addison’s back with a set of answers, and he’ll tell us how it affects the outlook for the HPC market through the rest of the decade and into the 2030s. |
| 10:00am | From Paper Archives to AI Agents: Activating Underutilized Data in the Subsurface Nefeli Moridis, Global Head of Subsurface Solutions, NVIDIA | Underutilized data — paper reports, scanned logs, and legacy digital archives — represents one of the largest untapped opportunities in subsurface and energy operations. This session explores how multi-modal generative AI and agentic reasoning can unlock this forgotten asset base, with examples spanning seismic and drilling foundation models as well as cross-industry parallels in finance, manufacturing, and medicine. Attendees will leave with practical insight into technical approaches, architecture considerations, and real-world use cases to help prioritize their own underused data for AI-driven value creation. |
| 10:45am | Break and networking | |
| 11:00am | Building a Data Center for AI in Energy: Lessons from the Field Mikael Dognon, Datacenter Group, SLB | This talk offers an inside look at the real-world challenges and hard-won lessons of designing and deploying a data center built to support AI workloads in the energy sector. From infrastructure decisions and power constraints to data governance and organizational change, the speaker will share an honest account of what it takes to go from vision to production — and what they'd do differently. |
| 11:45am | Lunch and networking | |
| 1:00pm | Lessons Learned: From the Battlefield to the Boardroom Will Chesney, Navy SEAL | Talk and Q&A Will and Cairo’s military stories, including one of the most famous military campaigns in history, along with his personal struggle with injuries and the transition to civilian life, are the definition of inspirational. His story serves as a reminder that giving up is the easy way out and through a never quit attitude, a pure heart and relying on the team we build around us, we truly can persevere through the seemingly impossible. |
| 2:00pm | High Resolution Decision Engineering: How AI is Changing the Mining Industry John Mortimer, CTO, GeologicAI | GeologicAI innovates the tools, technologies and solutions that enable High Resolution Decision Engineering: the ability to make critical, complex decisions without compromising confidence and efficiencies. We have a mission to build the trusted source of geologic truth - to be the most comprehensive, sophisticated, and practical data intelligence provider for the mining industry. This presentation will provide a technical deep-dive into the full GeologicAI stack — from our proprietary mobile scanning trailer technology, which enables remote, high-resolution core logging and detailed ore body characterization, to our advanced modeling and simulation software, which empowers mine planners to optimize mine design, maximize recovery, and refine processing strategies. Attendees will gain insight into how these integrated capabilities form a cohesive data-to-decision pipeline, and how HPC, AI, and data are the foundational enablers that make it possible. |
| 2:45pm | Enterprise HPC Under Pressure: Strategy, Supply, and Sustainability at Shell Michael Gujral, HPC Engineering & Operations Manager, Shell | High Performance Computing remains mission-critical to Shell’s subsurface, energy transition, and digital transformation efforts, but the way HPC is designed, delivered, and operated is rapidly evolving. Supply chain constraints, accelerating cloud adoption, sustainability targets, and emerging cooling technologies are reshaping long-held assumptions about infrastructure and operations. In this session, I will share Shell’s current HPC strategy and practical lessons learned from operating large-scale, production HPC environments under real-world constraints. The talk will explore how Shell is balancing on‑prem and cloud resources, navigating hardware and GPU supply challenges, and embedding sustainability into HPC architecture decisions; without compromising performance, reliability, or scientific productivity. |
| 3:30pm | Break and networking | |
| 3:45pm | HPC and AI: Forging New Frontiers for Digital Twins and Cancer Eric Stahlberg, Executive Administrative Director, Institute for Data Science in Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Anderson | While HPC has long been a part of cancer research and even clinical care, the past decade has seen a dramatic change in how HPC is employed to drive advances in cancer applications. The emergence of deep learning AI approaches together with the rise of available research and clinical data have transformed the contributions for HPC to reduce the impact of cancer and power innovations in predictive oncology leading to even digital twins for cancer. The presentation will unite two perspectives of this transformation. The first perspective will highlight how a decade of collaboration between the National Cancer Institute and Department of Energy fostered team data science to drive early frontiers for AI and HPC applications in cancer, helping pave the way for cancer digital twins. The second perspective will look ahead to the future, sharing about efforts at MD Anderson to open avenues for data science to impact cancer broadly through the Institute for Data Science in Oncology and activities underway globally enabling digital twins in medicine. |
| 4:15pm | PANEL: HPC and AI – In Search of Ground Truth | Addison Snell will lead a fun and dynamic panel including John Mortimer, Michael Gujral, Eric Stahlberg, Doug Norton, and Dave Montana AI promises to revolutionize the enterprise, from R&D to profits. But can we trust it? How much of that is still HPC’s job? Addison Snell moderates this wrap-up panel as we search, together, for the real truth. (After all, that’s what we do with HPC.) |
| 5:00pm | Wrap up and Reception Doug Norton, President HPC Society | |
| 6:30pm | Venue closes |
Event Speakers
Addison Snell
Co-Founder & CEO of Intersect360 Research
Addison Snell is a veteran of the High Performance Computing industry and the co-founder and CEO of Intersect360 Research, delivering data and insights covering the HPC-AI market and coordinating the HPC-AI Leadership Organization (HALO).
He launched his company in 2007 as Tabor Research, a division of Tabor Communications. He brought the company independent in 2009 as Intersect360 Research together with his partner, Christopher Willard, Ph.D. Under his leadership, Intersect360 Research has become a premier source of market information, analysis, and consulting for the high-performance computing (HPC) and hyperscale industries worldwide. Addison is a frequent keynote speaker and panel moderator at industry events, has testified before the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission Congressional Subcommittee, and was named one of 2010’s “People to Watch” by HPCwire.
Nefeli Moridis, Ph.D.
Global Head of Subsurface Solutions, NVIDIA
Nefeli Moridis is the global head of subsurface solutions for NVIDIA’s global energy team. She focuses on accelerating high-performance computing applications and leads the AI initiatives for subsurface problems. These include seismic, reservoir, and CCUS solutions for the energy industry.
Prior to joining NVIDIA, Nefeli worked in the oil and gas industry as a reservoir engineer and consultant, focusing on projects in unconventional reservoirs in the U.S. and internationally. She has been invited to present at over 50 energy events since joining NVIDIA and has published eleven SPE papers that she has presented at SPE conferences worldwide.
Nefeli holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University, a M.Sc. from the French Institute of Petroleum (IFP School) in Reservoir Engineering, and a B.Sc. from the University of Texas at Austin in Petroleum Engineering
Will Chesney
Navy SEAL
Many corporations, sports teams and leaders from a spectrum of industries are seeking Will to bring his inspirational story to their team building events. Will and Cairo’s military stories, including one of the most famous military campaigns in history, along with his personal struggle with injuries and the transition to civilian life, are the definition of inspirational. His story serves as a reminder that giving up is the easy way out and through a never quit attitude, a pure heart and relying on the team we build around us, we truly can persevere through the seemingly impossible.
John Mortimer
CTO, GeologicAI
Michael Gujral
HPC Service Development Manager, Shell
Michael Gujral is the HPC Service Development Manager at Shell, where he oversees the demand & delivery of high-performance computing (HPC) resources & solutions for both new and existing workloads. With a career spanning over 16 years at Shell, Michael has held diverse roles in IT, Technical Data Management, and Geophysics. He has worked in various locations, including Calgary, Pittsburgh, and his current base in Houston.
Michael earned his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of British Columbia. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family – he’s a proud husband and father to two lovely daughters, Amelia and Emma, aged 6 and 4. In his free time, you’ll often find him in the kitchen, experimenting with cooking, or out running to stay active and healthy.
Eric Stahlberg
Executive Administrative Director, Institute for Data Science in Oncology, MD Anderson
Dr. Stahlberg is the Executive Administrative Director for the Institute for Data Science in Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center where he leads implementation strategy for the IDSO. His efforts include providing expert guidance on developing collaborations, establishing sustainable operations, and community engagement to fulfill the IDSO’s role in helping to End Cancer. Prior to joining MD Anderson, Dr. Stahlberg served as Director of Cancer Data Science Initiatives at Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR). He has been instrumental in establishing the Frederick National Laboratory’s high-performance computing initiative and in assembling scientific teams across multiple, complex organizations to advance predictive oncology. Stahlberg has played a leadership role in many key partnerships, including a major collaboration between the NCI and the Department of Energy (DOE). Under the Joint Design of Advanced Computing Systems for Cancer (JDACS4C), NCI and DOE are accelerating progress in precision oncology and computing. Stahlberg has spearheaded the Frederick National Laboratory’s contributions to a number of JDACS4C projects, including ATOM and CANDLE. Dr. Stahlberg holds a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from The Ohio State University and undergraduate majors in computer science, chemistry and mathematics from Wartburg College.