Test Past Annual Event
This year’s Annual Technology Meeting of The Society of HPC Professionals was a great event held at the beautiful Shell Woodcreek facility. There was also a virtual option for those who could not attend in person.
We had a great lineup of speakers from the HPC & AI community per the agenda below. Members may login and view presentations and watch the meeting videos.
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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 the CEO of Intersect360 Research and a veteran of the High Performance Computing industry. He launched the company in 2007 as Tabor Research, a division of Tabor Communications, and served as that company’s VP/GM until he and his partner, Christopher Willard, Ph.D., acquired Tabor Research in 2009. During his tenure, Addison has established Intersect360 Research as a premier source of market information, analysis, and consulting. He was named one of 2010’s “People to Watch” by HPCwire.
Addison was previously an HPC industry analyst for IDC, where he was well-known among industry stakeholders. Prior to IDC, he gained recognition as a marketing leader and spokesperson for SGI’s supercomputing products and strategy. Addison holds a master’s degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Kelly Senecal, Ph.D.
Co-Founder, Convergent Science
Dr. Kelly Senecal is a co-founder of Convergent Science, an industry-leading computational fluid dynamics software company. He is a visiting professor at the University of Oxford, an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a co-founder and director of the Computational Chemistry Consortium (C3). Dr. Senecal is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Combustion Institute (CI). He is currently Chair of the executive committee of the ASME ICE Division. Recent accolades include the 2019 ASME ICE Award, the 2024 ASME Dedicated Service Award, and the 2023 SAE John Johnson Diesel Engine Research Medal.
Dr. Senecal has long been an advocate of creating cleaner propulsion systems, with a particular focus on using CFD and HPC to enable faster design. Starting with his TEDx talk in late 2016, he has promoted a diverse mix of transportation technologies through invited talks, articles, and social media. Dr. Senecal is co-author of the book Racing Toward Zero: The Untold Story of Driving Green, winner of the 2022 Independent Press Award for Environment.
Randima (Randy) Fernando
Co-Founder, Center for Humane Technology
Randima helps leading tech companies, NGOs, policymakers, and others understand and act on the intersections between technology, ethics, mindfulness, and social good. He is a Co-Founder and former Executive Director of Center for Humane Technology, which has helped over 100 million people globally understand the harms of extractive technology through the documentary film The Social Dilemma, the podcast Your Undivided Attention, and many other initiatives.
Randy started his career at NVIDIA, where he led many award-winning projects and authored three #1-ranked books on 3D graphics over seven years. Additionally, he was a founding Board Member of the NVIDIA Foundation. Randy then served for seven years as founding Executive Director at Mindful Schools, a nonprofit that has taught mindfulness to millions of kids and over 70,000 educators worldwide. He is also on the board of Spirit Rock Meditation Center.
Kristjan Hafsteinsson
CEO, Responsible Compute
Kristjan Hafsteinsson is the Co-founder and CEO of Responsible Compute and has developed the project from conception to operation. Responsible Compute is a bit of a unicorn in the CSP world, with a hyper focus on HPC and AI/ML infrastructure delivered in a responsible way. We believe it is very important in this multi-cloud world to have the option of combining the offerings of specialized providers with those of the hyperscale providers to better fit the applications.
Since 2006 Kristjan has been actively taking part in the Data Center industry in Iceland, harnessing its sustainable energy sources. Prior to Responsible Compute, he took on key roles in and leading multiple Data Center projects for Siminn and Mila (Formerly Iceland Telecom) as well as leading two startups in the field. Iceland has a unique value proposition with its Geothermal and Hydroelectric energy sources (electricity production in Iceland is 70% Hydro and 30% Geothermal). In addition, free air-to-air cooling and water cooling provide an extremely efficient solution leading to a world class low carbon footprint.
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.
Punith Shivaprasad
Global Technical Lead for Immersion Coolants business, Shell
Punith Shivaprasad is working as Global Technical Lead for Immersion Coolants business, which is part of the global lubricants organization and based in Houston, TX. In his current role he provides technology support to customers in the data-centre and blockchain industry. He joined Shell in 2007 and held various roles in Projects and Technology group.
Mileidy Giraldo, Ph.D.
Worldwide Lead, Multi-Modal Multi-Omics Data Strategy, AWS
Dr. Mileidy Giraldo has over 20 years of experience as a Scientist in Academia and Industry with expertise in Omics, Bioinformatics, Protein Structure, Infectious diseases, and Vaccine design. In the past 6 years Dr. Giraldo has served as a Scientific Advisor to tech companies and Technology Strategist to Pharma R&D and IT/HPC leaders worldwide. At AWS, Dr. Giraldo is the Worldwide Head of R&D Digital and Data Strategy for Healthcare and Life Sciences. She thrives as a science-to-technology conduit translating scientific requirements into technology solutions that drive Digital Transformation.
Dr. Giraldo’s team is spearheading innovation in R&D across a number of areas, including: i) Digitally-connected labs to automate, monitor, and connect ELN/LIMS systems, lab/robotics software, and instruments and devices; ii) Digital twins as in silico alternatives to in vivo testing; iii) Genomics histopathology multi-modal Foundational Models for disease risk prediction; iv) Pan-Amazon approaches to improve trial patient engagement and adherence with Alexa; v) Gen AI to mine scientific publications and integrate with multi-omics datasets; vi) LLMs to convert scientists’ natural language queries to SQL to mine a large Genomics knowledgebase; vii/ Multi-agent solutions for multi-step drug design protocol in precision discovery.