Project Coordinator
Stefano Markidis is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has since held positions at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories. Stefano has a vast experience in plasma simulations for space and astrophysics. He has played a vital role in developing and optimizing plasma simulation codes throughout his career. His current research focuses on quantum computing applications. Stefano has coordinated several significant projects, including the EU-funded EPiGRAM-HS project. He also serves as the KTH PI for the EuroHPC DEEP-SEA, IO-SEA, and ADMIRE projects. When he's not working, Stefano can be found indulging in his passions. He is an avid fan of Italian soccer and spends his free time reading the works of Raymond Carver.
Project Manager
Jeremy Williams is currently pursuing a PhD in Computer Science with a specialization in High-Performance Computing and Visualization at KTH. Jeremy will focus on evaluating and investigating the characteristics of how to process extreme amounts of datasets from plasma simulations using exascale computing systems. Jeremy has participated in conference proceedings, executive meetings, and liaisons with research participants/partners to identify and monitor project deliverables, scopes and objectives.
Jeremy is part of the KTH HPC Group lead by his principal supervisor, Stefano Markidis. Before coming to KTH, Jeremy completed a Master’s Degree in Modelling for Science and Engineering (MMSE) with a Data Science and Engineering Speciality at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in Cerdanyola del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain. During MMSE, Jeremy completed a research stay at Department of Computer Architecture and Operating Systems (CAOS). Jeremy is interested in: Data Intensive Computing, Data Streaming Simulations, High Performance Computing (HPC) and High-Performance Data Analytics (HPDA).
Jeremy enjoys listening to music, travelling and social activities.
WP2 Leader
Vassilis Papaefstathiou is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at FORTH-ICS and the University of Crete, Greece. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science (2013) from the University of Crete. From 2014 – 2016 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and worked on the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant project MECCA. Since 2016 he is with FORTH-ICS and University of Crete. His research interests include Parallel Computer Architecture, Memory Hierarchies, High-Performance Computing, High-Speed Interconnects, Low-Power Datacenter Servers, and Storage Systems, with particular emphasis on cross-layer design and optimization. He has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed conferences such as: HPCA, ICS, IPDPS, NOCS, INFOCOM, CCS and journals such as: ACM TACO, IEEE Micro, and IEEE ToN. He has also participated in numerous conference program committees including MICRO, IPDPS, PACT, FPL. He has been involved in several EU-funded research projects (EPI-SGA1, EPI-SGA2, EUPILOT, eProcessor, Plasma-PEPSC, EuroEXA, ExaNest, ExaNoDe, ECOSCALE, EuroServer, ERC MECCA, SHARCS, ENCORE, SARC, UNISIX, SIVSS) and has designed several FPGA-based hardware prototypes for multicore architectures and high-performance interconnects. He coordinated FORTH’s tasks in European Processor Initiative - Phase 1 (EPI-SGA1 2019-2021) and led FORTH's technical contributions on hardware design for the EPAC RISC-V chip and the EPAC chip bring-up and testing. He is the Principal Investigator of FORTH for the European Processor Initiative – Phase 2 (EPI-SGA2 2022 – 2024), The European Pilot (2021 – 2025), and Plasma-PEPSC (2023 – 2026). In EPI-SGA2 he is the Work Package Leader for “RTL Performance Analysis and FPGA Emulation”, in EUPILOT he is the Work Package leader for the “Memory Hierarchy”, and in Plasma-PEPSC he is the Work Package Leader for “Co-design of Plasma Simulation Codes with the European Processor and Accelerator”. He is also actively involved in the Task Groups and SIGs of the RISC-V Foundation and served as the first Acting Chair of the RISC-V IOMMU Task Group.
WP3 Leader
Dr. Urs Ganse is a theoretical Space Physicist, with a research focus on
kinetic plasma simulations. After studying physics and obtaining his doctorate
from the University of Würzburg, Germany, on Particle-in-Cell simulations of
solar radio bursts, he has worked as a postdoc at the University of Helsinki,
Finland, University of Turku, Finland, Northwest University Potchefstroom,
South Africa and the Finnish Meteorological Institute.
In his current position as a University Researcher at the University of
Helsinki, he leads the development of the Vlasiator model the near-Earth plasma
environment and its interactions with Earth's magnetic field.
WP4 Leader
Dr. Leon Kos is employed at the LeCAD laboratory at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana (FME UL). He's leader of the laboratory's Plasma Engineering Group (PEG), which is mostly involved in the development of simulation codes and simulation workflows for fusion energy research.
His research interest is in the last decade focused on computational modelling of plasma physics and processes, development of numerical methods and multi-physics coupling for fusion engineering, simulation, verification and optimization of codes. His research team is internationally recognised for development of integrated modelling for fusion engineering that require multi-scale coupling of codes using supercomputing resources. His research team develops parallel codes and couples tools capable of describing all aspects of the integrated plasma-plant system, as well as software able to infer plasma and plant parameters from the suite of measurements. His work is closely connected with industry and international fusion experimental reactor ITER where he won several public tenders for code development. He managed and participated in several international projects within COST, EU frameworks, ITER, EUROfusion, PRACE(EU), Research grants and Centres of Excelence in HPC. He also works with the students (domestic and foreign) and has been an anvisor of several PhD theses and acted as a mentor for postdocs.
WP5 Leader
Dr. Ivy Peng is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. She also leads the Scalable Parallel System Laboratory (ScaLab). Her research group focuses on large-scale parallel systems, encompassing computer architecture, system software, and applications. Her team is passionate about developing innovative solutions for exploiting heterogeneous computing systems by combining workload and architecture characteristics. Her research on heterogeneous systems spans from specialized accelerators like GPU and DPU to heterogeneous memories like HBM and persistent memory. She has conducted extensive research for pre-exascale and exascale projects throughout her career. Before joining KTH, she worked on hardware evaluation and integration for the Exascale Computing Project.
Her research has been published in prestigious journals and conference proceedings, and has been recognized with several best paper awards.
WP6 Leader
Dr. David Tskhakaya completed his PhD study at the Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics in Moscow and Tbilisi State University. During the period 1991 – 1997 he was working as a researched in the plasma physics department of the Andronikashvili Institute of Plasma Physics, Tbilisi. From 1997 to 2019 he continued working as a senior scientists and lecturer in the Institute of the Theoretical Physics of the University Innsbruck, Austria. From 2019 he is working in the Institute of the Plasma Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, as a head of Theory and Modelling Department. The main field of his research is kinetic study of the plasma edge and development of PIC and MC codes for this study.
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