HPC Challenges & Opportunities in 2025: Thought Leaders Panel

Dr. Sadaf Alam
Chief Technology Officer, Bristol Centre for Supercomputing

Dr. Sadaf R. Alam is the University of Bristol's Director of Advanced Computing Strategy. Sadaf joined Bristol University in 2022 from the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) where she was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr. Alam studied computer science at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where she received her Ph.D. Until March 2009, she was a computer scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.

Sadaf ensures end-to-end integrity of HPC systems and storage solutions and leads strategic projects at the centre. She has held several different roles across her career including group lead of future systems, chief architect and head of operations. She is a member of ACM, ACM-W, SIGHPC and Women in HPC, and was the technical chair of the world Supercomputing conference SC22. 

Sadaf was the chief architect of multiple generations of Piz Daint supercomputing platforms, which is one of Europe’s fastest and among the top 3 supercomputers in the world for many years, and also chief architect of the MeteoSwiss innovative, co-designed operational numerical weather forecasting platforms.

Dr. Happy Sithole
Executive Manager - National Integrated Cyber-Infrastructure System (NICIS), University of Johannesburg

Amongst his responsibilities is to oversee the developments of High Performance Computing in the country, through the Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC), roll-out of broadband connectivity for all science councils and universities, through the SANReN and ensure long term data management for research community through DIRISA. Dr. Sithole has a PhD in Materials Science focused on mineral extraction schemes using large-scale simulations. He has applied the simulation techniques in diamond mining industry, where he worked as Process Optimisation specialist. He has also worked in nuclear power plant design, as Senior Process Engineer. His work in High Performance Computing includes strategic development of HPC and also technical level design of the HPC systems. He is passionate on applications performance on HPC systems, and considers HPC systems development to be driven by the applications requirements. He has pioneered the development of skills in South Africa and the continent. Dr. Sithole supports megascience projects such as the SKA and LHC projects. He sits in Steering Committees for HPC in different countries and also a Board Member of the National Library of South Africa, where he is the Chair of the ICT Committee. Dr. Sithole is also a member of the Steering Committee of ISC and SC. He has presented invited and plenary talks in many meetings and countries.

Dr. Dan Stanzione
Associate Vice President For Research, Executive Director, TACC

Dr. Dan Stanzione is a nationally recognized leader in the field of high performance computing who has made an impact in the open science community for more than 30 years. He is Executive Director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), one of the leading advanced academic computing centers in the world and holds the position of Associate Vice President for Research at The University of Texas at Austin.

Stanzione serves as the principal investigator (PI) for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Leadership Class Computing Facility (LCCF), which started construction in July 2024 and is expected to begin operations in 2026. The LCCF will deploy Horizon, which will be the largest academic supercomputer dedicated to open science research in the NSF portfolio.

Stanzione is also the PI for several current NSF-funded supercomputers including Frontera, the fastest supercomputer at a U.S. university, and Vista, an AI-centric system—all dedicated to open science research. Stanzione received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and his master's degree and doctorate in computer engineering from Clemson University.