The 3rd Digital Twins Workshop for High-Performance Computing 

Abstract (150 words)

"Digital twins are revolutionizing industry, transforming science, global policy, climate change and healthcare. This half day workshop first surveys digital twins in HPC environments then dives into a focused look at digital twins of HPC data centers. Evolving from basic 3D models to highly accurate replicas, digital twins serve as reliable data sources for decision-making, ranging from subatomic to cosmic scales. Applications in computational biomedicine, energy, and automation hint at future roles in quantum computing. The first set of talks seeks to foster a digital twins community in HPC, highlighting the potential to drive breakthroughs and inform critical policy decisions. Pivoting to HPC infrastructure, digital twins are transforming data centers, providing precise virtual models for enhanced efficiency. These models enable exploration of "what-if" analyses and complex behaviors across disciplines. The second set of talks and panel  addresses power and cooling efficiency, network behavior, and AR/VR applications, aiming to advance energy-efficient, sustainable computing solutions for next-generation infrastructures. The concluding panel will address all of the areas touched on and will also include discussion of the role of AI in the future of Digital Twins. 

National Academy of Sciences Engineering & Medicine - definition of Digital Twin

(source doc here, sub-committee reports here)

"A digital twin is a set of virtual information constructs that mimics the structure, context, and behavior of a natural, engineered, or social system (or system-of-systems), is dynamically updated with data from its physical twin, has a predictive capability, and informs decisions that realize value. The bidirectional interaction between the virtual and the physical is central to the digital twin."

Workshop Format & Schedule

This link describes the as proposed SC25 Digital Twins for HPC agenda including goals, structure and intended outcomes. The agenda linked to above is for the proposed full day workshop - as we have been allocated a 1/2 day, the agenda needs to be updated to reflect that.

For additional context and reference, please refer to this link for last year's  SC24 Workshop Agenda

Workshop and Session Chairs:

Andrea Townsend-Nicholson, Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at University College London

Bio: Andrea holds a chair in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at University College London (UCL). She obtained a BSc degree in Molecular Genetics & Molecular Biology (University of Toronto, Canada; 1986) and a DSc degree in Cellular & Molecular Biology (Université Louis Pasteur, France; 1990), completed postdoctoral training at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research (Sydney Australia;1991-1995) and UCL (1995-1999), and held a British Heart Foundation Fellowship at UCL from 1999-2001. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of cell surface receptor function in health and disease using a combination of experimental and computational methodologies. Andrea is particularly interested in facilitating the introduction of personalised medicine into clinical practice and in the development of computational methodologies that converge with experimental findings. She teaches medical and undergraduate bioscience students to use supercomputers as part of their taught university curriculum.

Peter Messmer - Director of Developer Technology - Digital Twins, HPC Viz, NVIDIA - co-chair

Bio: Peter is a senior manager in the HPC Developer Technology group at NVIDIA. He and his team work on tools and technologies to help clients use GPUs to accelerate their scientific discovery processes. Peter holds an MSc and PhD in physics from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, with a specialization in kinetic plasma physics and nonlinear optics.

Wes Brewer - Senior Researcher AI for Science & Digital Twins, Oak Ridge National Laboratory - co-chair

Bio: Wesley Brewer is a Senior Research Scientist in the Analytics & AI Methods at Scale (AAIMS) group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He holds a PhD in Computational Engineering from Mississippi State University and a MS in Ocean Engineering from MIT. Wesley's background is in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), he has considerable experience in modeling and simulation, as well as machine learning for science and engineering applications at scale on HPC. He has developed several CFD codes the U.S. Navy utilized in the design and analysis of advanced propulsion systems. Moreover, he’s developed a number of machine-learned models to support the U.S. Army’s helicopter program as well as the DoD in general, for which he won the 2019 DoD HPCMP Hero Award. Recently joining ORNL, Wes is leading an international initiative to develop ExaDigiT, an open-source framework for modeling liquid-cooled supercomputers, exemplified by its application on Frontier, an exascale supercomputer. 

Barton Fiske - Senior Alliances Manager - HPC DevTools, HPC Viz - co-chair, org lead

Bio: As senior alliances and product manager for math libraries and devtools  at NVIDIA, Barton has been fascinated by 3D graphics, visualization and computer gaming from a very early age and pursued his degree in Computer Science specifically to further these interests into a full blown profession. A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Barton has more than 30 years experience in a variety of prior roles, ranging from software engineer to systems engineer and demo architect to senior cloud architect and director of technical sales and evangelism. Barton is the co-author of two books on Java programming and has developed dozens of interactive 2D, 3D and VR demo experiences for a wide variety of industrial scenarios, from global product launches to end user applications. He is currently using Digital Twin technology in his own life to manage and maintain models of his seaside home in Newport, RI. 

Elisabeth Mayer (LRZ) Digital Twins @ SC24 -l session co-chair

Bio: Elisabeth Mayer has been working at Centre for Virtual Reality and Visualisation (V2C) of the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) since 2017. Her research fields include Virtual Reality, rendering workflows and visualisation of big datasets. Her interests and expertise include 3D-modelling, game engines and VR. Additionally, she regularly participates in Game Jams and art projects. 

Workshop Format & Schedule

Sunday, November 16th, 2025 – all times US/ET

08:30 am - 09:00 am Visionary Speaker (pending): Dr. Michael Grieves, University of Central Forida :  Dr. Michael Grieves is an internationally renowned expert in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and originated the concept of the Digital Twin. His focus is on virtual product development, engineering, systems engineering, and complex systems, manufacturing, especially additive manufacturing, and operational sustainment.

Invited Talks & Panel

Digital Twins for HPC in Life Sciences & Weather/Climate (session lead Barton Fiske)

09:00 am - 09:20 am Dr. Andrea Townsend-Nicholson, University College London - Human Digital Twin Challenges

09:20 am - 09:40 am Dr. Jeff Adie, NVIDIA AI Technology Center, Singapore

09:40 am - 10:00 am Bring your own Digital Twin Part 1 - lightning talks

10:00 am - 10:30 am Break + Digital Twin Consortium overview, Dan Isaacs CTO Digital Twin Consortium

+ guest/poster(s) ?

Digital Twins for HPC Data Centers (session lead Wes Brewer, ORNL)

10:30 am - 10:50 am Invited Talk 1 - Cullen Bash VP R&D, Hewlett Packard Labs - Director of the Systems Architecture Lab

10:50am -  11:10 am Invited Talk 2 - Michael Papka, Warren S. McCulloch Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago, Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, Director, ALCF, Argonne Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory

11:10 am - 11:30 am Bring your own Digital Twin Part Two - lightning talks

11:30 am - 12:00 Panel Discussion: Digital Twins for HPC and the Role of AI

Expected Outcomes from the workshop

Attendees should be able to identify and relate to the key characteristics of what comprises a digital twin and their uses in high performance computing scenarios across domains covered.

Attendees should be able to assess potential real-world example use cases and identify the appropriate means and methodologies for representing them in the digital twin world.

By the end of the workshop, attendees will come away with a deeper understanding of the current state of the art of digital twin technologies, with realistic expectations and the means and methods to leverage in their varied scientific domains and existing or new digital twin projects.

An intended outcome is the establishment of an ongoing community of practitioners who will continue to further the development of digital twins in high performance computing environments.

Other HPC Digital Twins Resources, Conferences and Workshops

This web page provides a list of existing HPC Digital Twins resources conference and workshops unrelated to SC25

SCAsia 25:  Digital Twins for Science (1/2 day workshop - to be delivered March 10th, 2025)

Please refer to this link for the SCAsia25 Workshop Agenda

SC24 Digital Twins: Digital Twins for High Performance Computing (full day workshop)

Please refer to this link for the official SC24 Workshop Agenda

SC23 Workshop Website

SC23 Detailed Workshop Agenda

BoF Attendees opt-in contact/affiliation list

Questions/Topics below carried forward from George Biro’s slides from SC22 DT BoF:

HPC Challenges / Opportunities

• Algorithms

  • Extremely heterogeneous, distributed computing (leadership computing to edge computing)

  • Hierarchical model management

  • Real time performance, streaming / incomplete / stochastic data

  • Federated, asynchronous, discrete events

  • Encrypted data

• Software

  • Programming APIs for such complex workflows

  • I/O, assimilation, uncertainty quantification, optimization, experimental design, physical model learning

  • Integration of simulation, AI/ML, sensor, data processing / data mining

• Systems

  • Resource allocation, runtimes, monitoring, control,

  • Interactive steering, interoperability with diverse systems, legacy systems, databases

  • Data movement: fault tolerant, heterogeneous / wireless network stacks

  • On demand computing

• Hardware

  • Embedded, FPGAs, ASICs, networks, sensors....

Detailed notes/obs

• Around 90 participants, large fraction stayed for the entire session

• Had three speakers and lots of discussion.

  • Ultimate outcome was that we want to organize a workshop both at ISC and SC

  • Unfortunately, the discussion did not yield a lot of material immediately relevant to the NASEM report

  • Positioned OV as a platform for building/operating digital twins

  • Issues identified: Terminology, expectation management, focus. Workshop will need to address them.

• Outcome:

  • Submit workshop proposals for both ISC and SC

  • Need to have a focused call for papers, to avoid getting too diverse contributions

  • Probably two “tracks” for twins: Technology for building twins, and application of twins

  • Need a strong review committee to identify quality papers to avoid hyping the topic

• Various folks expressed interest in helping to organize such a workshop, they will reach out.

Detailed summary notes:

• Clarified the goal of this BOF: determine if we want a workshop.

  • Passed a clipboard to collect email addresses of interested folks. 

• Kicked off with Nils’ slide highlighting the confusion about the term Digital Twin

  • Made distinction between a digital shadow (replication of the world in digital space) and digital twin

  • Started a discussion about terminology (and that we don’t want to address it in this BOF)

• Raised question what twins people were working on

  • Devin Bailey (?) from U Arizona on twin of the Amazon/rainforest

  • Andrea Townsend-Nicholson (Univ College London) builds a digital twin of humans. Distributed a survey on acceptance of digital twins in medicine (below). Seems to be collaborating with @Mark Rothwell already. Is organizing a BOF at ISC, interested in collaboration on a workshop.

• George Biros gave a quick presentation of their activities and a collection of nice questions for discussion (link here).

  • Very well received.

  • Somebody brought up that the key question to answer when building digitals twins are: “Of what? For what?”

• Moved to the discussion about a workshop at SC23 or ISC

  • General agreement that a workshop is necessary

  • Nicolas Erdody (nicolas.erdody@openparallel.com) is working on a platform for Digital Twins. 

  • Discussion about how to avoid confusion, danger of hype. Consensus that a workshop committee would need to be careful in selecting contributions, check for substance and scientific rigor

  • Distinction of infrastructure/building of digital twins, and use of digital twins.

  • @Barton Fiske volunteered to help organize the workshop

• Need for a standard for interoperation of digital twins was brought up.

• Bill Tang presented his vision of twins for fusion (verbal only).

  • Need for collaboration

  • Timely opportunity as ITER moves forward, other centers are building complex fusion devices.

  • Voiced strong support for workshop both at ISC and SC

• Rob Akers voiced his concern about too wide a topic for a single workshop, needs to be focused

  • Technology, math, comp sci aspects,..

Additional discussions before/after:

• Penelope Clayton-Smith from Quantum Recruitment Corp (penelope@quantumrecruitment.com)

• Brian Golembiewski (Intel): brian.p.golembiewki@intel.com

• Arya Basu (abasu@ualr.edu) of UA LittleRock is curious about driving cave from HPC system.