SC25 Workshop

Verónica G. Melesse Vergara (Vergara Larrea) is Section Head of the High Performance Computing (HPC) Operations Section at the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She has over a decade of experience in high performance computing, leading large-scale systems testing and optimization efforts. Previously, she served as Group Leader of the System Acceptance & User Environment Group at NCCS, home to the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), where she led acceptance for Summit and Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer.

Verónica’s research interests include high performance computing, large-scale system testing, performance evaluation and optimization of scientific applications, and the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence to systems biology. She is a member of both IEEE and ACM, has served on the SC Steering Committee,and serves on the ACM SIGHPC Executive Committee. Verónica earned a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Reed College and an M.S. in Computational Science from Florida State University. Originally from Quito, Ecuador, she is passionate about advancing diversity and excellence in HPC.

Kate Adams, Natasha Pavlovikj, and Christina Roberts

The Great Plains Network (GPN) Chapter of Women in High Performance Computing (WHPC) brings together researchers, engineers, and educators across the Midwest to advance diversity and collaboration in advanced computing. The chapter is led by Kate Adams (Cyberinfrastructure Technologist at Great Plains Network), Natasha Pavlovikj (Lead HPC Applications Specialist at University of Nebraska Holland Computing Center), and Christina Roberts (CyberInfrastructure Engineer at the University of Missouri–Columbia).

Together, they foster mentorship, professional growth, and collaboration across GPN member institutions. Recent initiatives and interests within the chapter reflect the region’s leadership in AI and machine learning, quantum research collaboration, telehealth innovation, cloud connectivity and networking resiliency, and cyberinfrastructure modernization. Through these efforts, the GPN WHPC Chapter continues to strengthen the role of women in shaping the future of high-performance and data-intensive research across the Great Plains.

Carina Kemp, PhD is the Global Lead for Research at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she advances global strategies for accelerating research and innovation through cloud technologies. With more than 20 years of experience across academia, government, and industry, she has dedicated her career to enabling research through digital transformation, open data, and high-performance computing. Prior to joining AWS, Carina provided scientific and digital leadership at Geoscience Australia, where she developed the organization’s first Data Strategy and pioneered the use of virtual laboratories and HPC to extract insights from national-scale datasets.

Trained as a geophysicist, she has also developed data-science software and methods to reduce exploration risk in mineral systems. Dr. Kemp holds a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Sydney and degrees in Geology and Geophysics from the University of New South Wales.

Hai Ah Nam, PhD is the High Performance Computing (HPC) Technology Department Head at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She is also the NERSC-10 Project Director, leading the team to deliver NERSC’s next flagship supercomputer, Doudna, scheduled to be delivered in late 2026. The Doudna system will be designed for a new era that requires the integration of advanced capabilities — the convergence of simulations and modeling, advances in AI, and an explosion of experimental and observational data — to enable new modes of scientific discovery.

Hai Ah’s scientific career spans four U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories (LLNL, ORNL, LANL, LBNL), where she has contributed to projects in low-energy nuclear physics, computational physics, and high performance computing. Hai Ah earned her Ph.D. in Computational Science from Claremont Graduate University and San Diego State University, an M.S. in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.A. in Physics from Scripps College.

Giulia Guidi, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University, where she leads the Cornell HPC Group. Her research focuses on high-performance computing for large-scale computational sciences, developing algorithms and software infrastructures that accelerate data processing while maintaining programming productivity and accessibility. She is particularly passionate about sparse linear algebra as a computational abstraction for large-scale challenges.

Giulia received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Applied Math and Computational Sciences Division (Performance and Algorithms Group) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and a graduate field faculty member in the Departments of Computational Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell. Her honors include the 2024 SIAG/Supercomputing Early Career Prize, the 2023 ISSNAF Young Investigator Mario Gerla Award, and the 2020 SIGHPC Computational & Data Science Fellowship.