IEEE/ACM SC RISE Workshop 2026

Objective

RISE 2026 aims to advance scientific exchange, showcase emerging research, and foster innovation, collaboration, and career growth. This technical workshop connects early-career HPC and AI innovators with established technical leaders, while promoting participation, leadership, and visibility in a structured, research-focused, interactive environment. It intentionally balances two complementary goals: technical excellence and professional growth across the broader HPC/AI ecosystem.

Expected Outcomes

RISE 2026 is built around two equally important outcomes:

Topics of Interest

RISE welcomes contributions across hardware and system architectures, software environments, algorithmic performance, applications, machine learning, quantum computing, cloud computing, energy efficiency, sustainability, and the broader HPC/AI ecosystem. The workshop features:

• RISE Research Expertise Digital Interactive Map (add yourself)
• RISE Curated HPC & AI Innovation Exhibit (add your project)
• Advanced Technical & Research Proficiency
• Strategic Career & Leadership Development
• Institutional & Community Engagement

Scope

RISE brings together innovators across the HPC and AI ecosystem at four career stages:

Featured Speech

NATIONAL LAB

Lori A. Diachin

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA

Exascale Computing ProjectApplied MathematicsNumerical Methods

From Vision to Impact: Lessons in National-Scale Collaboration and Research Impact from the Exascale Era

Abstract

The delivery of the nation’s first generation of exascale supercomputers was one of the largest and most consequential collaborative efforts in the history of high-performance computing, spanning national laboratories, universities, and industry partners across the country. Lori Diachin helped lead this effort as Deputy Director and then Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project (ECP) from 2018 through 2024. In this keynote, she will reflect on the technical, organizational, and human leadership lessons drawn from that journey: what it takes to align a multi-institutional team around a shared mission, how to sustain momentum through a decade-long research and engineering effort, and why mentorship and inclusive leadership are essential to building the next generation of computing talent. Drawing on her career across national laboratories and DOE programs, she will offer practical guidance for early- and mid-career researchers navigating their own paths in HPC and AI, and a candid look at what national-scale collaboration in science really requires.

Bio

Lori Diachin was the Director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Exascale Computing Project (ECP), a role she took on in June 2023 after serving as the project's deputy director since 2018. She currently serves as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Acting Associate Director for Computing, leading a workforce of approximately 1,400 staff across high-performance computing, mission-related computing sciences, and information technology. Diachin has over 30 years of experience in applied mathematics research, with expertise spanning mesh quality improvement, mesh component software, numerical methods, and parallel computing. Earlier in her career she directed LLNL's Center for Applied Scientific Computing for six years and served two years as Acting Information Technology Department Head, and before joining LLNL she was a computer scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories. In 2025, she was named one of HPCwire's "35 Legends" of high-performance computing, an honor recognizing individuals whose influence has shaped the trajectory of supercomputing.

Career Pathways Panel

Career Pathways Across Academia, Labs, & Industry: A Global View

NATIONAL LAB

Estela Suarez

Forschungszentrum Jülich
Germany

INDUSTRY

Thierry Pellegrino

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
USA

ACADEMIA

Florina M. Ciorba

University of Basel
Switzerland

"Meet Your Mentor / Senior Peer" Speed Networking

Four invited senior peers deliver 5-min lightning talks sharing their technical journeys, expertise development, career transitions, and leadership experiences. The fast-paced session offers opportunities for follow-up conversations and mentoring connections.

ACADEMIA INDUSTRY

John Gustafson

Arizona State University
VQ Research
USA

Posit ArithmeticGustafson's Law

ACADEMIA NATIONAL LAB

Ian Foster

University of Chicago
Argonne National Lab
USA

Father of Grid ComputingDistributed Systems

INDUSTRY
EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

Axel Koehler

NVIDIA
Germany

HPC ArchitectureLarge-Scale Clusters

INDUSTRY
ACM SIGHPC

Christine Harvey

NVIDIA
USA

HPC OperationsSlurm Clusters

Women-Led Technical Project Spotlights

Three invited women technical leaders present 5-min lightning talks highlighting innovative projects and research leadership.

Michele Weiland

EPCC - The University of Edinburgh, UK

Title: One Code, Two Worlds: Building an Open-Source CFD Code in Collaboration with Industry

ACADEMIACFDOpen-Source HPC

Isabel Schwerdtfeger

IBM, Germany

Title: Scalability Issues on AI Infrastructures

INDUSTRYAI InfrastructureScalability

Sally R. Ellingson

University of Kentucky, USA

Title: Cancer Surveillance in the Age of AI

ACADEMIAAI in HealthcareBiomedical Data

Rising Innovators Research Showcases

Five invited rising innovators deliver 5-min lightning talks showcasing their research, technical ideas, projects, discoveries, or emerging directions in HPC and AI.

Rabab Alomairy

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

Title: Algorithms as if Architecture Mattered: Moving Less, Computing Faster

ACADEMIAMixed-Precision ComputingCommunication-Avoiding Algorithms

Giulia Guidi

Cornell University, USA

Title: Sparse by Nature, Parallel by Design: HPC for the Life Sciences

ACADEMIASparse ComputationsComputational Genomics

Tong Shu

University of North Texas, USA

Title: TBA

ACADEMIAScientific WorkflowsAuto-Tuning

Floris-Jan Willemsen

Leiden University, Netherlands

Title: Abstract, Portable, Performant: realizing sustainable HPC

ACADEMIAAuto-TuningPerformance Portability

Anna Yue

HPE, USA

Title: TBA

INDUSTRY

Agenda

Organizers

GENERAL CHAIR

Ayesha Afzal

Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU)
Germany

Program Co-Chairs

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR

Ümit V. Çatalyürek

Georgia Institute of Technology
USA

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR

Ana-Lucia Varbanescu

University of Twente
Netherlands

PROGRAM CO-CHAIR

Carina Kemp

Amazon Web Services
Australia

Collaborators

Erlangen National High Performance Computing Center (NHR@FAU) / NHR Women in HPC Chapter

IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on High-Performance Computing (TCHPC)

Contact

For questions, please contact the General Chair: Ayesha Afzal at ayesha.afzal@fau.de.

Announcements

Workshop on SC26 Site Now Available!

The workshop schedule for SC RISE 2026 is now available. Check the session details here.

Featured Speech Announced!

Featured speech by Lori Diachin (LLNL) has been announced. Check the technical details here.

RISE@SC26 at a Glance

Sectors

Academia · Industry · National Labs

Industry

NVIDIA · AWS · IBM · HPE

Regions

Europe · North America · Middle East

Germany, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, UK, USA