Compute | MENA // Previous speakers include

Jon Summers is Scientific Lead in Data Centres at Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), an Adjunct Professor in Fluid Mechanics at Lulea Technical University in Sweden and a Visiting Professor in Thermofluids at the University of Leeds. During the last 25 years, he has worked on several government and industry funded projects requiring the use of computation. Having built and managed compute clusters to support many research projects, Jon chaired the High-Performance Computing User Group for 20 years at the University of Leeds. In the last eight years Jon’s research has focused on a range of thermal and energy management projects within Data Centres, Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning and industrial sectors. Since early 2013 Jon has been involved in liquid cooled IT research projects, focussing both at the data centre and the microprocessor scales, which has been further transformed by the opportunities of integrated digital infrastructure research at the RISE ICE test and demo datacenter facility, which includes large testbeds supporting industry and academia. His research and technological development at RISE during this decade is focussed on making the digital infrastructure as energy efficient and sustainable as possible.

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Husam leads the Systems Technology Team at Microsoft’s CO+I CTO Office focusing on vertical integration (sw-chip-server-datacenter) of next gen tech for cloud & AI hardware and infrastructure. His team drives innovations across cooling, power, network, sustainability & material technologies, bringing them from incubation to production. His work has received many recognitions including DCD Award for Mission Critical Tech Innovation, IEEE Micro Top Picks, TCPMT Best Paper Award, & ASME InterPACK Outstanding Paper Award. Husam has more than 70 publications and +120 filed/granted patents and he is a member of IEEE, ASHRAE TC9.9, ASME, OpenCompute, & iMasons.

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Dr. Poh Seng (PS) Lee is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He currently serves as the Director of Centre for Energy Research & Technology (CERT) and Programme Director of Cooling Energy Science & Technology Singapore (CoolestSG) national consortium. Prof Lee’s research interests include high performance cooling techniques (in particular single and two-phase microchannel cooling), energy efficient air conditioning and low-grade waste heat recovery. He is the recipient of numerous research and innovation awards including 2013 NUS Faculty of Engineering's Young Faculty Research Award, 2011 Institution of Engineers Singapore (IES) Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award, 2011 Asia Pacific Clean Energy Summit Top 10 Defense Energy Technology Solutions Award and 2009 Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award (TKKYIA) - Defense Science.

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Steve is a HPC and Open Source Analyst at Northrop Grumman Corporation. He has expertise in technically oriented engineering and research with a focus on high performance computing and open source software implementation with application to internal processes and external business opportunities.

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Stephanie serves as Vice President of Strategy at Flex Ltd, developing and implementing growth strategies for the Communications, Enterprise, and Cloud (CEC) business unit.

Previously, she spent 18 years at Intel Corporation, holding leadership roles such as General Manager of Strategy and Market Analytics in the Data Center and AI Group, where she focused on strategic planning for Xeon and Accelerator product lines, as well as Senior Director of Product Sustainability, Strategic Planning Director, and High-Performance Computing CFO.

Stephanie contributes to industry initiatives and speaks regularly at events on data center technology strategy, sustainability, and market trends. She holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from Washington State University.

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Carrie Goetz’s extensive global expertise spans over 40 years designing, running, and auditing data centers, IT departments, and intelligent buildings. As the author of the Amazon best-sellers "Jumpstart Your Career in Data Centers Featuring Careers for Women, Trades, and Vets in Tech and Data Centers," and "Educator’s Reference for Data Center Education," (teacher’s reference) “Polly Packet’s Precious Payload,” (children’s) books, Carrie has a proven track record of translating complex tech concepts into accessible and engaging narratives from sustainability to servers, cabling to cloud.

Carrie was awarded the inaugural AFCOM Lifetime Achievement Award and BICSI WIB Lifetime Achievement Award. She is listed in the top 25 women in technology and twice as the top 25 in mission-critical, amongst her other accolades. She is an international keynote speaker and currently champions new entrants into the industry. Carrie is working to establish a national registered apprenticeship program to attract diverse, new talent to this great industry.

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Robert Novo has in-depth experience in service delivery, network operations, executive consulting, leading-edge technology and carrier-grade, resilient telecommunications. Robert is experienced with leading large team consulting projects, managing shifting priorities and delivering on-time with quality to CxOs of Fortune 500, multi-national customers.

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Amanda Brock is CEO of OpenUK, the UK organisation for the business of Open Technology: open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards and open access AI - with a purpose of UK Leadership and Global Collaboration in Open Technology. She is also the Executive Producer of State of Open Con 25 taking place 4 - 5 February 2025 in London and has produced 2023 and 24 events.

Appointed member of the Cabinet Office's Open Standards Board; and both UKRI’s UK Exascale Science and Industry Advisory Board and Digital Research Infrastructure Advisory Board, she is a commercial Advisory Board Member at California Cyber Security company Mimoto and at the Scottish Geo Spatial Data company Space Aye. She is also an Advisory Board Member of KDE and a European Representative of the Open Invention Network.

A lawyer of 25 years’ experience, Amanda previously chaired the Open Source and IP Advisory Group of the United Nations Technology Innovation Labs; sat on the OASIS Open Projects, Initiative; was a Member of the British Computer Society Inaugural Influence Board; and of the UK Government Energy Sector Digitalisation Task Force Advisory Board; as well as being an elected Board Member of the Open Source Initiative. Formerly General Counsel of Canonical a role she held for 5 years from 2008 she set up and ran their legal function and has been part of the open source contributing community since.

Amanda is a judge in the IDG Foundry CIO 100 in 2023 and 2024, having been a Judge in the We are Tech Women Rising Star Awards in 2020-22.  Listed as the 37th Most Influential Woman in UK Tech by Computer Weekly in 2023 and in Computing’s IT Leaders 100 2023, and the INvolve HERoes list of 100 global women executives driving change by example in 2022 -23. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Women, Influence & Power in Law Awards UK in 2022.

A regular contributor to the tech press, she is the editor of Open Source Law, Policy and Practice (2nd edition) published by Oxford University Press in October 2022, with open access thanks to the Vietsch Foundation https://amandabrock.com/books

linkedin.com/in/amandabrocktech

@amandabrockUK @openuk_uk

https://openuk.uk/  https://amandabrock.com/

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Phillip Koblence co-founded NYI (www.nyi.net) in 1996. Since then, he has successfully navigated through an ever-shifting infrastructure landscape and grown the company from a single data center in Lower Manhattan to a robust network with executional capabilities in key national and international markets. His leadership over a span of more than twenty years has positioned NYI as a leader in hybrid infrastructure solutions. Part of NYI’s success is due to the strong emphasis placed on building lasting relationships with clients. Through this focus on customer experience, and an ability to cut through complexity and hype, NYI has set the bar in the industry for high-touch infrastructure solutions. Phillip is a frequent speaker at industry events and has been profiled by Data Center Knowledge, TheWHIR, MSPMentor, and NJ BIZ. He has also contributed to CRN and NJ Business Magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with an engineering degree.

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Michael Akinla joined Panduit over 20-years ago, initially within the technical systems division, EMEA. In 2019 he became business manager, Central Europe North working within the data center and enterprise division, spearheading Panduit’s product initiatives in the region.

Michael Akinla has extensive experience in data center infrastructure, telecommunications and structured cabling and has worked extensively to develop new market opportunities for Panduit’s market leading fiber and copper cabling infrastructure and associated technologies. Michael Akinla continues to work closely with the technical group to align technology and customers’ business goals in solid, effective infrastructure solutions.

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Giordano Albertazzi became Vertiv Chief Executive Officer in January 2023 and retains his role as President, Americas until a replacement is named. Along with establishing overall strategic direction, he is responsible for operations and business development specifically in the Americas. His broad focus is on operational performance improvement and strengthening Vertiv’s competitive position through innovation excellence.

Giordano began his career at Kone Elevators, where he progressed through operations and product development leadership roles. He joined Emerson Network Power in 1998 and held positions with increasing responsibility, including plant manager from 1999 to 2001, marketing and product management director for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) from 2002 to 2004, and managing director for the Italian market unit from 2004 to 2006. In 2006, Giordano was promoted to vice president services for the Liebert Europe business. In 2011, he was appointed vice president services for the broader EMEA region, and in 2014 became vice president sales. In 2016, Emerson Network Power rebranded as standalone company Vertiv, and Giordano drove significant operational and financial improvements while serving as president of the company in EMEA. In March 2022, he began his role as President, Americas and was named Chief Operating Officer in October that same year.

Giordano holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan as well as a master’s degree in management from Stanford University.

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David McCall is the VP of Innovation for QTS Data Centers. He is responsible for building teams, setting strategic goals, and serving as an evangelist for one of largest and fastest growing data center service providers in the United States. He has more than 14 years of solutions engineering experience in the data center, telecommunications, and internet technology industries.

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Jeff Wittich is the Chief Product Officer at Ampere. Jeff has extensive leadership experience in the semiconductor industry in roles ranging from product and process development to business strategy to marketing. Prior to joining Ampere, he worked at Intel for 15 years in a variety of positions throughout the company. Most recently, he was responsible for the Cloud Service Provider Platform business, driving global market reach, product customization, and ultimately defining the products and platforms being used across the cloud worldwide. While at Intel, Jeff also led a product development team responsible for 5 generations of Xeon processors. He received an Intel Achievement Award for his work in developing the Custom CPU program.

Jeff has an MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.

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Paul brings more than 25 years of experience in facilities management in mission-critical environments to Stellium. He has considerable experience in the design, implementation, and operation of large-scale data centers in Ireland and Europe, and has developed processes specific to mission-critical data center environments. These include security and access control procedures; DCIM and capacity management; business continuity planning; lifecycle management; and energy management. Paul has also developed BCP and lifecycle processes to support uptime requirements for Tier III+ data centers, and has implemented service operations to ISO 9001, OHS 18001, 14001, 22301, and 27001 standards.

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Nate Hefner is a Market Development Manager for Hyperscale and Private Data Centers in Corning Optical Communications. Nate joined Corning in 2018 and has held multiple roles in engineering, project management, and commercial operations. He has published multiple articles on harnessing new technologies for the data center market. Nate graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from the Virginia Military Institute and is a Certified Project Management professional.

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Andy Lawrence serves as Executive Director of Research, Uptime Institute, providing information and insights for planning and managing critical digital infrastructure. He has researched, written and presented on a wide range of enterprise technology topics, spanning innovation and disruption, investment, automation, software, energy, sustainability, and market development. During his tenure, Andy has also contributed to European Union projects on cloud services and clean energy, and on an international project to carbon footprint IT. His current research interests include disruptions in infrastructure and energy, edge data centers, cloud and distributed resiliency.

Before joining Uptime Institute, Andy served as Research Director for 451 Research, leading teams analyzing and advising on topics including Eco-Efficient IT, renewable energy, 5G and data center technologies. Andy also co-founded Infoconomy, a publishing and research company focusing on enterprise IT; and was a technology and business journalist writing for business and national media. He launched several IT business magazines and information services in both the UK and US. He has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Manchester, with an interest in Philosophy of Science.

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Ali Heydari is the Data Center Technologist at Nvidia, the fastest growing AI-enabling technology company. In this role, he is the data center technologist in charge of hardware and data center design with focus on liquid cooling of high heat density data centers and hardware products. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from University of Illinois, Urbana, M.S., Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and M.A. in applied mathematics from University of California, Berkeley

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David Martinez is the Engineering Program Project lead at Sandia National Labs Corporate Computing Facilities (CCF). David has in depth understanding of HVAC controls, IT, Facility hardware implementations, and is widely viewed as a DOE resource for both air and liquid cooled data center deployments. Dave is frequently consulted by other DOE internal and external Gov’t agencies for design review and innovative approaches to data center management & energy efficiency. During his 35+ years of service, Sandia has received numerous energy efficiency awards attributed to the thought leadership he brings to his position. David is currently providing oversight of the build-out of a new Sandia HPC center and Sandia Livermore’s California Data Center.

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Manoj is Omdia’s data center computing and networking expert. He covers trailblazing technologies such as processors that enable the programmability of compute and networking hardware, edge computing, composable infrastructure, and the adoption of open compute hardware. He has over 15 years of experience in engineering and financial services, consulting, and research.

Before joining Omdia, Manoj was the founder and director of QWave India, a hardware engineering services company that specializes in designing data center hardware for clients such as Facebook and LinkedIn. His team delivered Facebook’s first three open compute switches, pioneering the bare metal switching technology that has revolutionized the data center. He also worked on the architecture and design of Open19’s first switch and server. Manoj has also held senior positions in financial services, consulting, and media companies. He holds two bachelor’s degrees—one in physics and one in information technology—and an MBA from India’s Mahatma Gandhi University.

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Shane Brauner, Chief Information Officer, joined Schrödinger in 2009. Prior to joining Schrödinger, Shane held technical and leadership roles in a variety of organizations from academia and startups to mid-sized and Fortune 50 companies. Shane brings nearly two decades of experience enabling research and high-performance computing. Shane combines a deep technical background with a focus on enabling people and organizations through technology. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Houston.

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Mr. Elissa is a 25-year veteran of the critical facilities industry as a recognized critical facilities technologist and leader in this field. He focuses on technology, critical facilities infrastructure, data centers, delivering engineering services as a project lead and is a subject matter expert in the data center strategy, planning, sourcing, designing, commissioning and operations of critical computer networks cabling infrastructure, and data center infrastructure management, as well as developing engineering databases.

As a technology consultant and a professional engineer, Mr. Elissa participated and led over 160 major projects of varying facility types totaling around 20 million square feet of data processing critical facilities space, such as data centers, call centers, trading floors, office buildings, hospitals, biotech pharmaceuticals clean-rooms, network operations control rooms, telco, higher education, corporate and university campuses, and varying government buildings.

At Hewlett Packard Enterprise Data Center Facilities, Mr. Elissa is a worldwide Distinguished Technologist and client consulting principal with a focus on the Technology Infrastructure practice. In this role, he has the overarching responsibility for all the projects delivered for this specialty services. He is also a core contributor to data center product development at HPE. Mr. Elissa is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Delaware since 2004.

Mr. Elissa is sought globally to provide strategic consulting to international enterprise organizations in a variety of industries such as financial services, securities exchanges, information technology, telecommunications, national and international retail chains, pharmaceutical & research, higher education, healthcare, energy & petrochemicals, utilities providers as well as federal, state and local governments & defense entities, as well as Artificial Intelligence and high performance computing (HPC).

Mr. Elissa received his Master of Science in Technology Management from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 2001 in Hoboken, New Jersey and his Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Marquette University in 1997 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

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Rodney is a Systems Engineer Manager, for CommScope’s Enterprise division. He manages the

Systems Engineers for the Great Lakes and Southeast Region, as well as, provides infrastructure

design, engineering, training and technical support for local customers, partners and

consultants. Rodney is also serving his sixteenth term as Chair of the TIA Fiber Optics

Technology Consortium. He works closely with the TIA staff and other manufacturers within the

industry to develop tools and resources to assist with deployment of fiber optic networks.

Rodney is a 25-year BICSI member and holds the designations of Registered Communications

Distribution Designer (RCDD), Network Transport Specialist (NTS), Outside Plant Specialist

(OSP), Data Center Design Consultant (DCDC) and CBRS-CPI.

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Christian Roth is an experienced Architect with a demonstrated history of working in the computer software and hardware industry in Architecture and Management positions for more then 30 years. Skilled in building Cloud Data Centers (EN50600, BICSI, TSI, EPI CDCP, CTDC, CDFOM certified), evaluation of co-location sites, Standardization, Structured Cabling, Enterprise Software, ITIL V3 Expert, Process design, IT and DC Strategy, Business Development, Pre-sales and Professional Services. Strong information technology professional graduated from University of applied sciences Fulda.

Today Christian is globally responsible for IT White space standardization including cabinets, power distribution, structured cabling, Co-location evaluation, DC design blueprints and influences DC Strategy at SAP SE Global Cloud Services, Data Center Management. Prior to his SAP engagement he has worked in post sales, presales, business development, Fujitsu SAP competence center and various management positions on regional and EMEA level.

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Pascal is the Worldwide Director at HPE Services, in charge of Hybrid IT Sustainable Data Center Modernization Practice. he focus on a services portfolio that includes Datacenter transformation and migration programs, from sustainable design to implementation and commissioning, Datacenter assessments and capacity planning, Datacenter advisory and strategy consulting, Datacenter Management Services and Modular Datacenters

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Pascal has acquired 30+ years consulting expertise in leading complex and international design and implementation projects, including IT solution architecture design and Datacenter engineering for mission critical operations.

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Nick Ni is Senior Director, Data Center AI and Computer Markets at Adaptive Embedded Computing Group (AECG) at AMD, responsible for the P&L of the fast-growing Data Center AI and compute segment. His team is responsible for product marketing and product management including AI product planning, go-to-market, business development and solution architecture.

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Ronna Davis has been in the networking and telecommunication industry for 26 years. She has been with CommScope for over 16 years and has held positions in product line management, sales, and the channel. She is currently on CommScope's Strategy and Technology Team for Buildings and Campuses. Ronna chairs the TIA SPEC, Single Pair Ethernet Consortium. Prior to CommScope, she worked in the design and construction of telecommunications networks for eight years and in wholesale distribution for two years. She is a LEED Green Associate, and member of the Ethernet Alliance. Ronna holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Marketing.

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Technology Leader with global experience in system architecture, planning, product development, and partner relations. Expertise in bridging the gap between technical and business to achieve technology advancement goals. Adept at the software/silicon interception point, business analysis, silicon technology, global communications, and quality enhancement. Experience includes positions with top technology corporations.

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