User Tools

Site Tools


working_groups:hpc4est-member_s_short_bio

This is an old revision of the document!


High Performance Computing for Earth Sciences Team (HPC4EST)

You can find the instructions for editing your short bio here.

Xavier Yepes-Arbós

Position: Senior Research Engineer (Team Leader)
Interests: Earth Sciences Modelling, Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing
Contact: xavier.yepes@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0002-1420-6400
Joined BSC: September 2015

Short Bio: Xavier Yepes-Arbós is a senior research engineer of the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) where he leads the High Performance Computing for Earth Sciences Team. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering with specialization in computer architecture and a master’s degree in Innovation and Research in Informatics (MIRI) with specialization in HPC from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). He joined BSC in 2015 to work on different research lines, including scalability and performance analysis of Earth system models (ESMs), optimization of the computational and I/O processes, data compression and explore novel hardware architectures.

Projects: ESiWACE2, ESiWACE3, DEEP-SEA, EUPILOT, KNMI Harmonie-Arome HPC Collaboration, EERIE, OEMES, DE_340, DE_330, EDITO, GANANA, TerraDT.


Aitor Sánchez

Position: Researcher
Interests: Climate Modeling and Forecasting, Statistical Analysis, Computational Science
Contact: aitor.sanchez@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: March 2025

Short Bio: Aitor holds a bachelor in Physics and a PhD in Computational Quantum Chemistry. He has worked with a wide range of powerful supercomputers with the aim of developing parallel and accelerated code for Chemistry and Quantum Physics. He joined the BSC to work on atmospheric and oceanic tools inside the CES group.

Projects:


Alexey Medvedev

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Parallel Programming, CUDA, MPI, HPC, Generative Programming, Software Design
Contact: alexey.medvedev@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: 2023

Short Bio: Alexey Medvedev is a Senior Research Engineer from the Performance Team of Computational Earth Sciences Group of the Earth Sciences Department at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He joined BSC to work on accelerator support implementation for Earth system models. His previous experience is related to complex software design in various fields of Math Modeling, including Fluid Dynamics, Solid Mechanics and others. The software packages he was working on are able to run on parallel scales up to 200 nodes equipped with NVIDIA accelerators. He has certain experience in design and implementation of such HPC components as linear algebra libraries and MPI standard implementation libraries. His scientific interests include various practical aspects of parallel computing, he is a co-author and author of 8 papers in Scopus-indexed journals, author of 1 seminar course. He received his Master Degree from Cybernetics Faculty of Tula State University (Russia) in 2001.

Projects:


Andrew Forembski

Position: Researcher
Interests: Parallel Programming, Heterogeneous Computing, CUDA, MPI
Contact: andrew.forembski@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0003-2648-9548
Joined BSC: September 2024

Short Bio: Andrew Forembski is a GPU programming researcher of the High Performance Computing team within the Computational Earth Sciences (CES) group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He holds a PhD in Theoretical Quantum Mechanics from Dublin City University, and has 7 years of experience in scientific programming using C/C++, OpenMP and CUDA/HIP. Before joining BSC, he worked at Ubotica Technologies and Intel Movidius on various embedded C applications. At BSC, he focuses on the porting of atmospheric chemistry calculations onto GPUs. He contributes to the development and optimisation of the Chemistry Across Multiple Phases (CAMP) project.

Projects: CAMP, MONARCH


Antoni Portero

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Parallel Programming, Heterogeneous Computing, CUDA/HIP, HPC, Numerical Algorithms, Quantum Mechanics
Contact: antoni.portero@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: April 2025

Short Bio: Antoni received a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Electronic Engineering, specializing in Microelectronics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He has contributed to several H2020 projects, including power-aware computing (i.e. HARPA and READEX) and simulations of large HPC systems (i.e. TERAFLUX and the European Processor Initiative). His research interests include system-level design for embedded and high-performance systems, multiprocessor architectures, and networks-on-chip (NoC). He is a member of HiPEAC and a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM. Antoni joined the Performance Team within the Computational Earth Sciences group at the BSC.

Projects:


Carlos Peña

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Parallel Programming, low-level optimisation, HPC, Computer Architecture.
Contact: carlos.penadepedro@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0001-6820-3419
Joined BSC: July 2022

Short Bio: Carlos Peña is a Research Engineer of the High Performance Computing for Earth Sciences Team (HPC4EST) within the Computational Earth Sciences (CES) group at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). He holds a Bachelors degree in computer science granted at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). At BSC, he focuses on HPC performance analysis an optimisation. He contributed to several national and European projects, including EUPILOT, DestinE CATS and DARE. This work included profiling and optimising Earth system models, focusing on CPU and I/O performance, and contributing to the co-design of compilers for new RISC-V vector architectures by providing input on the characterisation of Earth system applications.

Projects: EUPILOT, DestinE CATS, DARE.

Carlos Romero

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: High Performance Computers, Parallel Computing
Contact: carlos.romero@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0009-0005-9148-2993
Joined BSC:

Short Bio: Carlos received his BSc in Mathematics and BSc in Physics from the University of Sevilla and his MSc in Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion from the University of Aix-Marseille. He has conducted research at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics, the Department of Analysis and Design of Wind Turbines at CENER, and the Fusion group at the University of Seville, working on a variety of subjects including radar-array optimisation, data science, and plasma physics HPC. Prior to joining the Performance Team in May 2025 as HPC Scientific Software Engineer, Carlos was a member of the Fusion group at CASE Department.

Projects:


Christian Guzman

Position: Researcher
Interests: HPC performance, Scientific Models, Computer Architecture
Contact: christian.guzman@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0003-3709-6483
Joined BSC: 02-2019

Short Bio: Christian is a PhD Student in Computer Science for High-Performance Computing at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB), collaborating with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). Developed a GPU chemical solver for Earth System Models, using as a test-bed the chemistry Across Multiple Phases (CAMP) module alongside the Multiscale Online Nonhydrostatic Atmosphere Chemistry Model (MONARCH) and contributing to the most computational and logic part from a performance point of view.

Projects:


Iria Ayan

Position: Research Engineer
Interests:
Contact: iria.ayan@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: 2019

Short Bio: Iria Ayan is a physicist from University of Barcelona (UB) with a Master in Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Cosmology from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB). Her main experience has been related to high energy astrophysics and, in particular, she has focused on the study of gamma-ray binary systems. She has published in Proceeding of Science her research on searching for new gamma-ray binaries in order to be detected by new future telescopes such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA). She works at BSC in the Computation Earth Sciences group developing new features in the land-use model (H-TESSEL) embedded in the IFS weather model.

Projects:


Kai Keller

Position: Researcher
Interests: Numerical Climate Predictio
Contact: kai.keller@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0002-7023-6890
Joined BSC:

Short Bio: Kai Keller received an MSc in Physics at the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) and obtained a Ph.D. in computer science at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain). In the past few years, he worked on resiliency for applications in high-performance computing, where his focus has been on resilience for large ensemble data assimilation frameworks. He is currently working on the Destination Earth project.

Projects:


Maitane Fariñas

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Computational Physics, Computational Modelling, Earth Sciences
Contact: maitane.farinas@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: April 2024

Short Bio: Maitane has a Bachelor's degree in Physics from Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU) and a Master's degree in Atomistic and Multiscale Computational Modelling from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). She joined the Performance Team of the Computational Earth Sciences group as a Junior Research Engineer.

Projects:


Marcel Cases

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Computer Languages, Computational Modeling, Optimization, HPC, ML, Computer Networks, Logic Synthesis (FPGA)
Contact: marcel.cases@bsc.es LinkedIn Personal Website
ORCID:
Joined BSC: May 2024

Short Bio: Marcel is a Research Engineer in the Performance Team. He is an Electronics Engineering graduate (UPC) and has a Master in Innovation and Research in Informatics (MIRI, FIB-UPC). He joined BSC after having gained experience in software developement, modeling, mathematical optimization and forecasting for the energy and transportation industries in different research and innovation teams.

Projects:


Marta Alerany

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Computational Physics, Computational Modelling, HPC, Earth Sciences
Contact: marta.alerany@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0009-0007-9839-9732
Joined BSC: April 2024

Short Bio: Marta joined the Performance Team of the Computational Earth Sciences group as a Junior Research Engineer. She holds a double Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of Barcelona (UB), as well as a Master's in Applied Physics from the Technical University of Eindhoven (TUe).

Projects: HANAMI


Nicholas Abel

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Numerical Methods, HPC, Parallel Programming, CFD
Contact: nicholas.abel@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: May 2025

Short Bio: Nick received his BSc and MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico, USA in 2017 and 2020. He has worked on a variety of parallel scientific codes in the fields computational fluid dynamics and computational electromagnetics. Prior to joining CES, he was a researcher in the CASE department at BSC. Nick joined the performance team as an HPC engineer.

Projects:


Okke van Eck

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Complexity Theory, Energy Profiling, High Performance Computing, Performance Engineering
Contact: okke.vaneck@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0002-3600-5183
Joined BSC: September 2023

Short Bio: Okke finished his bachelor's in Computer Science at the University of Amsterdam in 2020 and his master's in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam in 2023. Afterwards, he joined BSC as a research engineer for the performance team and focused on GPUs. Afterwards, he also dived into energy profiling and is actively part of ongoing project proposals. His work resulted in the creation of two open-source tools: a custom GPU profiling tool called “BRAVAS” and an energy profiling interface called “pwrloc”. In his free time, Okke studies the complexity behind protein folding within the HP-model, which forms the foundation for his ongoing PhD.

Projects:

  • ClimateDT - phase 2
  • DEODE - phase 2
  • DEODE - phase 3
  • EDITO
  • EERIE
  • ECiWACE4

Oriol Tintó

Position: Researcher
Interests:
Contact: oriol.tinto@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0003-3182-3942
Joined BSC:

Short Bio:

Projects:


Pablo Aparici

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: Software Development, System Design, Massive Information Search and Analysis
Contact: pablo.aparici@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC:

Short Bio: Pablo is a 4rd year student of Bachelor Degree in Informatics Engineering, Mention in Software Engineering at FIB-UPC. Currently, he is developing his thesis “Computational metrics analysis for climate models”, which centers on calculating and visualizing new metrics and statistics for climate models using the data from Autosubmit databases.

Projects:


Roc Salvador

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: HPC, Computational complexity
Contact: roc.salvador@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: June 2023

Short Bio: Roc is a junior research engineer in the Earth Sciences group and a Performance team member. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from Facultat d'Informàtica de Barcelona (FIB). He will start the MSc in Research and Innovation in september 2023 at FIB. In the PT, he works in automatic profiling tools for the ESiWACE project.

Projects:


Rommel Quintanilla

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: GPU computing, HPC
Contact: rommel.quintanilla@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: August 2023

Short Bio: Rommel holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from the Universidad Federal Fluminense, Brazil. He has experience in parallel and distributed software development. Professionally, he worked as a software intern at the Computational and Dimensional Metrology Laboratory, associated with the Fluminense Federal University and the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras, where he automated a process of detecting geological features in oil well drilling images. Also, he was a C++ software engineer at BlazingDB Inc., where he was in charge of the development of new functionalities for the distributed SQL database engine on NVIDIA GPUs called BlazingSQL. Afterwards, he worked as a C++ software engineer for Voltron Data Inc., a startup around the in-memory format Apache Arrow that develops an ecosystem of portable tools to support high-performance computing for columnar data analysis.

Projects:


Sergi Palomas

Position: Research Engineer
Interests:
Contact: sergi.palomas@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID: 0000-0002-2191-152X
Joined BSC:

Short Bio: Sergi is a Research Engineer in the Performance Team. He's got a bachelor in Computer Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and he is finishing the MSc in HPC at the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona. Currently, he is in charge of the performance analysis of coupled experiments. Assessing Climate prediction and Atmospheric composition members to run their coupled experiments more efficiently by balancing multiple components: number of cores, mapping, scalability, etc.

Projects:


Simone Vacondio

Position: Researcher
Interests: High Performance Computing, Parallel Programming, Numerical Modeling
Contact: simone.vacondio@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: June 2025

Short Bio: Simone (he/him) got his PhD in Physics and Nanosciences from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy. He did research on electronic structure theories beyond the state of the art, validating their applicability by writing parallel implementations. Likewise, he contributed to the understanding of experimental findings by running electronic structure simulations on HPC platforms. He joined the Performance Team as a HPC Scientific Software Engineer to contribute to the improvement of EC-Earth.

Projects:


Victor Correal

Position: Research Engineer
Interests: High Performance Computing, Parallel Computing, Software Developing
Contact: victor.correal@bsc.es LinkedIn
ORCID:
Joined BSC: February 2023

Short Bio: Bachelor in Computer science (Hardware mention) by UPC. Member of the performance team in the computational Earth Science group. Mainly working on performanc profiling and optimization of HPC applications alongside other general computer science duties.

Projects:


working_groups/hpc4est-member_s_short_bio.1762849852.txt.gz · Last modified: 2025/11/11 08:30 by xyepes