In this epoch of technological evolution, data concerning problems of different scientific areas are steeply increasing in volume, requiring hundreds of PB of storage (Big Data). Specifically, these data are extensive in both single file size and number of files in many fields, such as astronomy, cosmology, biology, and meteorology. Maintaining a proper performance trend towards pre-Exascale systems requires a specific codesign between hardware and software, exploiting High-Performance Computing (HPC) techniques. On the hardware side, increasingly heterogeneous architectures with multiple nodes and accelerators linked with high-bandwidth bridges to the single node are required. On the software side, applications have to be written with programming languages that allow portability among diverse architectures while not losing performance and minimizing the time required by the programmer to adapt the application. Other important aspects are the maintainability of the numerical stability of a problem solution while increasing the system size and the number of computational resources and the requirement of a "green" solution, that is, the ability to build infrastructures and applications to compute operations with Big Data volumes without excessively increasing the energetic consumptions.
Topics of interest
Contributions concerning the following areas of interest are welcome:
Valentina
Cesare
valentina.cesare@inaf.it
Valentina Cesare is a fixed-term technologist at INAF - IRA (starting date 15/05/2025), where she is about to begin a work concerning GPU porting of scientific applications related to NGCroce project. From 01/12/2020 to 14/05/2025, she worked at INAF - OACT, firstly as fellowship student, then as research associate, and at last as fixed-term technologist, within a project about GPU porting of scientific applications related to the Gaia space mission, within the framework of the ICSC - National Center for Research in HPC, Big Data, and Quantum; Computing (PNRR - Future Computing initiative). A future involvement in the Euclid Consortium is planned. She received her Ph.D. in Physics and Astrophysics in March 2021 from the Physics Department of the University of Turin, with a thesis focused on galaxy dynamics in the framework of the modified gravity theory Refracted Gravity.
Alberto
Vecchiato
vecchiat@oato.inaf.it
Alberto Vecchiato is working in software development as responsible of the AVU-GSR pipeline within the Gaia mission at INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Torino, where he has held a permanent position since 2007. Generally, he is mainly working in the fields of astrometry, physics of gravitation, and tests of gravity physics theories. Since 2012, he has developed an interest for archaeoastronomy and the history of astronomy. He got his master thesis in Physics in 1996 and his PhD in Physics in 2001 at the University of Padova. A future involvement in the Euclid Consortium is planned.
Gianluca
Mittone
gianluca.mittone@unito.it
Gianluca Mittone is a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at the University of Turin, and his research is focused on the convergence between High-Performance Computing (HPC) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. In less than 5 years of research activity, he achieved 16 scientific publications and an H-index of 9 (source Google Scholar). His works are mainly related to the use of AI in medicine and Federated Learning (FL). Specifically, he is currently investigating the deployment of cross-HPC FL workloads through workflow-based approaches; and the use of FL as a tool to allow AI-based computation to scale efficiently for HPC benchmarking purposes. He is currently co-principal investigator in a joint research effort between the University of Turin and Telecom Italia (TIM) to develop an FL-as-a-Service platform for the "TIM Edge & Cloud Continuum" IPCEI European Project. His achievements rewarded him with an HPC-Europa3 scholarship and an EuroPar foundation studentship, together with the 'Best PhD Symposium Award' during the 2023 edition of the conference. His PRAISE Score, an AI-based diagnostic tool, has been awarded as an officially recommended diagnostic software" by the European Society of Cardiology in their 2023 guidelines.
Bruno
Casella
bruno.casella@unito.it
Bruno Casella is a research associate at the Computer Science Department of the University of Turin. He got the Ph.D. in Modeling and Data Science in June 2025 at the same department, financed by Leonardo Company. He graduated in Computer Engineering in 2020 with a thesis on the performances of AlphaZero, an artificial intelligence method based on reinforcement learning for the game of chess, that is able to win against the human world champion, in different scenarios. He also received the Master's Degree in Data Science for management in 2021 with a thesis on Federated Transfer Learning.