At WHPC, we’re committed to creating a community that empowers women and individuals from marginalised groups in High Performance Computing, AI and Quantum fields. This Women’s History Month, we are delighted to see several of our amazing volunteers being recognised in the SC Conference Series ‘Women Igniting Innovation in HPC’ initiative, led by Cristin Merritt, Head of Marketing at Alces Flight. The featured volunteers include Molly Presley, CXO at Hammerspace and Communications and Outreach Director at WHPC, Elsa Gonsirowski, Systems Software Developer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Jessica Dagostini, a student at the University of California Santa Cruz and SC24 WHPC Co-Chair.
Let’s take a closer look at these inspiring individuals and their impressive careers in the HPC field:
Molly Presley
“From the start of my career, I’ve been driven by the challenge of making complex technologies more accessible and impactful. HPC powers breakthroughs in AI, scientific discovery, and business transformation, but data remains the biggest barrier. My work focuses on solving that problem.
We’re at a pivotal moment—AI’s insatiable demand for data is reshaping both traditional and enterprise HPC. While HPC provides the computational backbone, unlocking AI’s full potential requires overcoming data bottlenecks and efficiently delivering data to GPUs at scale. That’s where Hammerspace comes in—building infrastructure that enables seamless AI-HPC integration.
Innovation thrives on diversity. Women play a crucial role in driving the next wave of breakthroughs, yet remain underrepresented in technical leadership. Elevating more women in HPC and AI isn’t just about equity—it’s essential for the field’s strength and competitiveness. I’m committed to fostering inclusion and supporting initiatives that bring more women into leadership.
Throughout my journey, I’ve worked with industry pioneers—from hyperscalers to national labs—advancing data mobility, efficiency, and sustainability. Whether through thought leadership, product innovation, or community engagement, I’m passionate about shaping the future of high-performance data infrastructure.
As an executive at Hammerspace, I help organizations break free from data silos, enabling seamless access to decentralized data across hybrid cloud, on-prem, and multi-data center environments. Our innovations in parallel file systems, pNFS, and GPU-driven storage architectures are redefining how enterprises and researchers harness HPC for AI and beyond.
HPC is no longer just about raw compute power—it’s about intelligent data orchestration. My goal is to push the boundaries of what’s possible, ensuring data reaches the right place at the right time, at the speed of innovation.
My name is Molly Presley and I serve as CXO at Hammerspace.”
Elsa Gonsirowski:
“My name is Elsa Gonsiorowski and as an HPC I/O Support Specialist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), my work focuses on creating spaces for High Performance Computing (HPC) users, developers, support staff, and students to collaborate, learn, and grow. My focus lies at the LLNL’s HPC facility, LC, home to the #1 system on the TOP500 list and through both professional and volunteer efforts, I foster strong communities that drive innovation, education, and communication in HPC.
At LLNL, I organize user meetings for some of our most advanced systems, providing a platform for users to share their experiences – their successes, challenges, and ideas for improvement. These thought provoking conversations help shape the future of our systems by ensuring that users feedback is heard and acted upon.
I’m also a member of the PESO Project, where I focus on coordinating the Better Scientific Software Fellowship. Since 2018, we’ve supported fellowship alumni who are leading the way in scientific software productivity and sustainability, helping researchers and developers adopt better software practices.
In addition, I volunteer as Chair of Women in HPC (WHPC), a growing organization dedicated to supporting underrepresented groups and their allies in the HPC workforce. We hold events at major conferences like ISC and SC, and we work to provide funding, career opportunities and a welcoming community for early-career researchers in HPC.”
Jessica Dagostini:
“My name is Jessica Dagostini, and I am a third-year PhD student at the University of California, Santa Cruz and one of the 2024 ACM SIGHPC Fellows. My research focuses on improving scientific software and computing, a field I became passionate about in 2019 during a summer internship in Brazil. Then, I helped port a scientific application to be parallelized into GPUs, aiming to improve performance for the application and the whole pipeline where it ran. Recently, I developed a proxy application based on pangenomics mapping, which serves as a valuable tool to expedite technological advancements in this crucial area. For the rest of my PhD, I will keep exploring new algorithms and solutions that enable scientific applications to take full advantage of their accelerator resources.
I am deeply committed to advocating for diversity and inclusion within the HPC community. As a first-generation female graduate student from Latin America, I am acutely aware of the challenges underrepresented groups face. Since 2020, I have been involved with activities that spotlight the importance of diversity and inclusion in HPC. In 2021 while pursuing a master’s degree amid a global pandemic, two colleagues and I founded the first affiliate of Women in HPC in Latin America. This initiative not only highlighted the need for greater female representation in HPC, it also created a safe space for sharing experiences and challenges. Such leadership led me to get involved with the global Women in HPC, and, since 2022, I have helped run the annual WHPC Workshop co-located with SC.
Through my work with HPC, I aim to ignite science by leveraging faster solutions to problems that impact society. More than that, I want to inspire others to engage in HPC and demonstrate how we can drive meaningful change in our world together.”
SC25 is celebrating Women’s History Month all throughout March! Each day, we’ll feature a new profile highlighting the incredible women working and studying in the field. Be sure to check in daily to read their inspiring stories.