HAMBURG, Germany, June 12, 2025 – As the ISC 2025 main program comes to a close today, the conference organization announced that Rosa M. Badia, a prominent European scientist specializing in parallel computing, high performance computing, and distributed systems, will serve as the chair of the 2026 program.
Badia was recently appointed Director of the HPC Software Research Area at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center in Spain. She also manages the Workflows and Distributed Computing Research Group, a position she has held since 2005, the same year when the European Center for Parallelism of Barcelona (CEPBA) transitioned to become the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
During the closing ceremony at ISC 2025, Torsten Hoefler, the outgoing chair, will hand over the stage and the responsibilities of chairing the next ISC to Badia. This event, which also commemorates its 40th anniversary, has been attended by more than 3,500 participants from 55 countries, representing the HC, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing communities. “Connecting the Dots” will continue to be the theme for next year’s event.
“In 2026, ISC will continue fostering connections across various fields, linking the technical aspects of HPC, quantum computing, AI and cloud computing with their diverse research applications – such as climate modeling, life sciences, energy, materials science, and engineering – placing special emphasis on sustainability,” Badia said. “As the demand for computing power grows, prioritizing sustainability is essential to reduce environmental impact, ensure responsible resource usage, and support long-term innovation.”
“The conference will continue connecting the dots on these topical aspects, but also by connecting researchers, industry leaders, and technology providers through expert talks, panel discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities, creating a collaborative environment that drives progress across disciplines.”
Badia’s research has significantly contributed to parallel programming models for multicore and distributed computing. Her recent work has focused on the digital continuum, proposing new programming environments and software solutions for edge-to-cloud computing, as well as supporting hybrid quantum-classical workflows. This research is integrated into PyCOMPSs/COMPSs, a parallel task-based programming framework for distributed computing, which is applied to develop large heterogeneous workflows that combine HPC, Big Data, and Machine Learning. Additionally, the group she leads is conducting research on Dislib, a parallel machine learning library optimized with PyCOMPSs.
Badia holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Catalonia. She has published over 200 papers in international conferences and journals and has been actively involved in projects funded by the European Commission, as well as contracts with industry. Notably, she served as the principal investigator for the EuroHPC JU project eFlows4HPC. Since early 2022, she has served as the chair of the ACM Europe Council and is a member of the EuroHPC JU Research Innovation Advisory Group (RIAG) and the HiPEAC Network of Excellence.
In 2019, Badia received the Euro-Par Achievement Award for her contributions to parallel processing. That same year, she was honored with the DonaTIC award in the Academia/Researcher category and the HPDC Achievement Award in 2021 for her innovations in parallel task-based programming models, workflow applications and systems, as well as her leadership in the HPC research community. Since 2023, she has been a member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Catalan Academy).
A glimpse into the next year’s program topics will be available in September. In the meantime, you can visit the website for preliminary information.
