Bio
Verónica G. Melesse Vergara (Vergara Larrea) is originally from Quito, Ecuador. Verónica earned a B.A. in Mathematics/Physics at Reed College and a M.S. in Computational Science at Florida State University. Verónica has over a decade of experience in the high performance computing (HPC) field and is currently Section Head of the HPC Operations Section in the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS). She was previously the Group Leader of the System Acceptance & User Environment Group in the NCCS, which is home to the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). Verónica led acceptance for Summit and Frontier, ORNL’s exascale supercomputer. Her research interests include high performance computing, large-scale system testing, performance evaluation and optimization of scientific applications, machine learning/artificial intelligence applied to systems biology. Verónica is a member of both IEEE and ACM and serves in the ACM SIGHPC Executive Committee and the SC Steering Committee.
Awards
- 2024 Great Minds in STEM Luminary Award (November 2024)
- Knox News' 40 under 40 Award (December 2023)
- Cray User Group 2023 Best Paper Award (May 2023)
- Cray User Group 2023 Best Paper Runner-up Award (May 2023)
- 2022 SPEC Contributor Group Award for Technical Leadership for the "SPEChpc™ 2021 Benchmark Suites"
- 2020 UT-Battelle Annual Awards Night Technical Support for Research Team Award for "Uninterrupted Operation of Summit during COVID-19 pandemic" (November 2020)
- 2020 UT-Battelle Annual Awards Night Community Engagement Team Award for "Yo-STEM" (November 2020)
- 2019 U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Achievement Award for "Summit and Sierra Teams" (December 2019)
- 2019 UT-Battelle Annual Awards Night Mission Support Award for "Summit Acceptance Team" (November 2019)
- 2019 ORNL Significant Event Award for "Acceptance Testing of the Summit Supercomputer"
- Cray User Group 2019 Best Paper Finalist (May 2019)
Professional Service
- ACM SIGHPC Meetings Coordinator (2017 - Present)
- SC Steering Committee (2021 - 2024)
Professional Affiliations
- ACM
- ACM SIGHPC
- IEEE Computer Society
- IEEE Computer Society Technical Community for High Performance Computing