Chair, Future Technologies Symposium
Jon Summers, Ph.D.
RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Scientific Leader in Data Centers, Adjunct Professor in Fluid Mechanics at Lulea Technical University in Sweden and a Visiting Professor to the Institute of Thermofluids at the University of Leeds in the UK. During the last 25 years, Jon has worked on a number of government and industry-funded projects requiring the use of computation. Having built and managed compute clusters to support many research projects, he chaired the High Performance Computing User Group for 20 years at the University of Leeds. In the last eight years, his research has focused on a range of thermal management and energy flow projects within the Data Centre, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning and industrial sectors. Since early 2013 he has been involved in liquid cooled IT research projects, focusing both at the data centre and the microprocessor scales, which has been further transformed by the opportunities of integrated digital infrastructure research at RISE. His current research focuses on thermal and energy management of microelectronic systems, which has led to many invited talks around the globe within the data centre community.
Co-chair
Future Technologies Symposium
Professor Poh Seng Lee, Ph.D.
National University of Singapore (NUS)
Professor Poh Seng (PS) Lee is the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Executive Director of the Energy Studies Institute (ESI). He also serves as Coordinating Director of NUS Energy Solutions Hub (NESH), and Co-Director of NUS Sustainable Futures (NSF) and Singapore Energy Consortium (SEC).
A thought leader on thermal management, green data centers, and energy sustainability, Professor Lee’s research centers on advanced cooling technologies, sustainable computing infrastructure, and energy-efficient systems. His pioneering contributions to liquid cooling, alternative cooling techniques, and digital infrastructure decarbonization have garnered international recognition.
To date, he has secured over SGD 25 million in research funding, published more than 200 papers, and co-led major initiatives such as the Sustainable Tropical Data Centre Testbed (STDCT). A sought-after expert, Professor Lee regularly serves as keynote speaker and panelist at global forums on AI-driven infrastructure, sustainable cooling, and energy resilience.
He holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and has been honored with multiple accolades, including Fellowships from ASME and IES.
Current FTS Program Committees
AI / HPC
Future Technologies Symposium
John Shalf, Ph.D.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
John Shalf is the Department Head for Computer Science at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He also formerly served as the Deputy Director for Hardware Technology on the US Department of Energy (DOE)-led Exascale Computing Project (ECP) and prior to that was CTO for the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) at LBNL. He has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in parallel computing software and HPC technology, including the widely cited report “The Landscape of Parallel Computing Research: A View from Berkeley” (with David Patterson and others). He is also the 2024-2027 distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society. Before joining Berkeley Laboratory, John worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Max Planck Institute for Gravitation Physics/Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), where he co-created the Cactus Computational Toolkit.
Weifeng Zhang, Ph.D.
Lenovo Research
Dr. Weifeng Zhang is a Vice President of Lenovo Group and the Head of Intelligent Computing Infrastructure Lab, Lenovo Research. Prior to joining Lenovo, Weifeng was the Chief Architect and VP of Software at Lightelligence Inc, responsible for hardware software co-design and software ecosystem to empower optical computing and interconnect technologies. Before that, Weifeng was a fellow of Alibaba Group and the Chief Scientist of Heterogeneous Computing at Alibaba Cloud Infrastructure. He also was a founding member of the Board of Directors at MLCommons™ (MLPerf™) and currently serves as the Chair of AI Co-Design Workgroup at Open Computing Project Foundation (OCP). Weifeng received his PhD in Computer Science from University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Grant Mackey
XCENA
Grant is a Distinguished Engineer at XCENA, a South Korea-based fabless startup tackling the memory wall limiting modern data-driven systems. An industry veteran, Grant is a founder, inventor, and researcher in the areas of memory, storage, and HPC systems. During his time at JRL, Western Digital, and LANL he has advanced these areas in one way or another through open source software development, simulation, prototype, and productization efforts across his career.
Professor Dong Li, Ph.D.
EECS, University of California, Merced
Dong Li is an associate professor at EECS, University of California, Merced. Previously, he was a research scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dong earned his PhD in computer science from Virginia Tech. His research focuses on high performance computing (HPC), and maintains a strong relevance to computer systems (especially systems for AI). Dong received an ORNL/CSMD Distinguished Contributor Award in 2013, a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation in 2016, Facebook faculty research award in 2021, Oracle Research Award in 2022, Western Digital Research Award in 2022, and AWS Research Award in 2025. His paper in SC’14 was in the best paper final list. His paper in ASPLOS’21 won the distinguished artifact award. He was also the lead PI for the NVIDIA CUDA Research Center at UC Merced. He is an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS).
Data Center Sustainability
Future Technologies Symposium
Julie Chenadec
Legrand
Julie Chenadec is a Data Centre Regulations & Standardization Expert at Legrand. With a background in environmental sustainability and community management, she brings her experience to transforming the digital economy and data center. Throughout her career, she has been active in program management for several European projects focusing on green IT technology and green data center and leading communities of 700+ members and partners.
Lucas Beran
Accelsius
Lucas Beran is Director of Product Marketing for Accelsius. He collaborates across marketing, sales and engineering teams to bridge the gap between our products and their target market. Prior to working at Accelsius, Lucas was an industry analyst for nearly a decade, providing market sizing, forecasts, and competitive landscape insights for data center power and thermal management markets. At Dell’Oro Group, Lucas established himself as one of the leading liquid cooling analysts supporting industry vendors, equity analysts and media/news outlets. He has presented his work to C-suite executives and investors, while being cited in public vendor’s quarterly reports, investor presentations, and open-source working groups.
Miranda G. Gardiner
iMasons Climate Accord
With 16+ years of experience, Miranda is a driven, professional manager with extensive industry experience in green buildings, energy and water efficiency, and sustainable master plans and policies. She is passionate about the environment and improving sustainability practices through local and global engagement, with a proven record of working for internationally recognized organizations like the US Green Building Council. She now focuses global carbon accounting of digital infrastructure to influence market-based decisions and drive the data center industry to achieve carbon neutrality.
Marta Chinnici, Ph.D.
ENEA
She graduated in Mathematics (2004) magna cum laude and received her PhD in Mathematics and Computer Science (2008). Currently, she is a Senior Researcher at ENEA within the ICT Division (HPC Lab) of the Department of Energy Technologies and Renewable Energy Sources.
In her current role, she serves as a Scientific Coordinator and Project Manager for numerous European and national initiatives, including major PNRR projects such as the Rome Technopole. She is a recognized expert for the European Commission, serving as a reviewer and evaluator for various ICT and Computer Science programs.
Her research and professional activities center on the study, analysis, and development of advanced ICT solutions, with a primary focus on Data Center (DC) Sustainability, High-Performance Computing (HPC), and Data Science. She actively contributes to several high-level working groups and technical committees regarding Quantum Computing and the energy efficiency of large-scale digital infrastructures.
She is the ENEA Representative on the Management and Coordination Committee of the DTC-Lazio (Cultural Technological District) and a member of the Technical Programme Committee (TPC) for various prestigious international conferences. Furthermore, she serves as an Editor-in-Chief and referee for prominent scientific journals. An accomplished author, she has published several books, essays, and numerous scientific articles, and is a frequent speaker at major national and international conferences.
Gemma Reeves
Alfa Laval
Gemma Reeves is a senior data centre leader at Alfa Laval with over 20 years of experience in high‑efficiency thermal technology and sustainable cooling solutions. She has built deep expertise across heat transfer, liquid cooling, HVAC, and energy‑optimised system design, supporting global operators and hyperscalers as they scale high‑density compute with resilient, low‑impact cooling strategies.
Her work spans strategic business development, technical guidance, and cross‑regional collaboration, helping customers implement next‑generation cooling architectures including direct‑to‑chip, immersion, and facility‑water systems. Gemma also contributes to industry knowledge through technical discussions and broadcasts on advanced cooling and sustainable digital infrastructure.
She is known for her strategic perspective, collaborative approach, and commitment to enabling more efficient, sustainable data centre growth worldwide.
Quantum
Future Technologies Symposium
Boniface “Yogi” Yogendran, CD, PEng
Independent
Boniface Yogendran is a Defence Scientist specializing in AI/ML and Quantum Computing at Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). At DRDC, he applies his deep expertise in advanced computational technologies to national security and defence. Before his current role, he served for 13 years in the Canadian Armed Forces, retiring as a Captain in the Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. His industry experience includes positions at BlackBerry as Systems Engineer and Zapata AI as a Quantum Software Engineer. Yogendran holds a MSc in Data Science from the University of Edinburgh and BSc in Bio Medical Engineering at the University of Guelph.