Dr Sadaf Alam - Director of Advanced Computing Strategy
Dr Sadaf R. Alam is the University of Bristol's Director of Advanced Computing Strategy. Sadaf joined Bristol University in 2022 from the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) where she was the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Dr. Alam studied computer science at the University of Edinburgh, UK, where she received her Ph.D. Until March 2009, she was a computer scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA.
Sadaf ensures end-to-end integrity of HPC systems and storage solutions and leads strategic projects at the centre. She has held several different roles across her career including group lead of future systems, chief architect and head of operations. She is a member of ACM, ACM-W, SIGHPC and Women in HPC, and was the technical chair of the world Supercomputing conference SC22.
Sadaf was the chief architect of multiple generations of Piz Daint supercomputing platforms, which is one of Europe’s fastest and among the top 3 supercomputers in the world for many years, and also chief architect of the MeteoSwiss innovative, co-designed operational numerical weather forecasting platforms.