Open Parallel

The SKA – The Ultimate Big Data Project BoF at ISC17 is co-organised and co-chaired by Dr Happy Sithole (South Africa) and Nicolás Erdödy (New Zealand)

Dr. Happy Sithole is the Director for the Center for High Performance Computing in South Africa (CHPC). Dr. Sithole has a PhD in Physics, which focused on Atomistic and Electronic Simulation of Sulphide Minerals. Dr. Sithole has worked as a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the Materials Modelling Center at University of Limpopo. He has also worked as a Research Scientist at De Beers Consolidated Mines, and later as a Senior Process Engineer at Pebble Bed-Modular Reactor Company. Dr. Sithole sits in a number of advisory committees of High Performance Computing, as a program committee member of both the International Super-Computing Meeting and the Russian High Performance Computing Committee. He also serves and inquisitor on the “Hot Seat” session at ISC Meetings, a select panel that interrogate technology vendors on their products.

Nicolás Erdödy is CEO and Founder of Open Parallel Ltd. Since 2013, Open Parallel is member of the New Zealand SKA Alliance and Work Package Manager for the Software Development Environment for the Central Signal Processor (CSP) of the Square Kilometre Array radio-telescope (SKA) – the largest scientific and engineering instrument in the world, to be built in the coming decade. Open Parallel also contributes to the computing platform of the Science Data Processor (SDP) of the SKA. Nicolás is also Conference Director of Multicore World, a global specialised think-tank in High Performance, Cloud, Mobile, Parallel and Exascale Computing, held every year in New Zealand since 2012. His background is in engineering, IT, mathematics and venture capital and holds a Master of Entrepreneurship from the University of Otago, NZ. Born in Uruguay from Hungarian parents he lives in Oamaru in the South Island of New Zealand.