Prior to that, Suha worked as a software engineer at Endgame Systems in Atlanta, USA where she processed big data using distributed and cloud computing technology and was a researcher at the Georgia Tech Research Institute during her graduate studies. Suha represents Saudi Aramco’s upstream research center when hosting VIP visitors, where she presents EXPEC ARC's strategy, vision and accomplishments. In addition, her involvement in the community through the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) has been highlighted by her selection as the SPE Saudi Arabia Section's Young Professionals Chairperson for the 2018-2019 term and the SPE Subcommittee Co-chair for the International Petroleum Technology Conference 2020. Suha has been awarded the Emerging Leader Global Petroleum Show award and the SPE Regional Young Member Outstanding service award in 2019.  She holds an MSc and BSc with highest honors in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.  

Philippe Thierry
Intel Corporation

Philippe works in the Intel Codesign and Exascale pathfinding group. His main research activity is devoted to performance prediction at node and full system level including uncertainties quantification as well as application characterization. Before that he was leading the Intel Energy Engineering Team for profiling and tuning of HPC applications for current and future platforms. Philippe obtained a Ph.D. in Geophysics on seismic imaging from Paris School of Mines, France, where he has spent several years working on 3D prestack depth migration and High Performance Computing.  Philippe also worked at SGI as benchmarking team leader before joining Intel Corp in Paris area.

Robert Sutor
IBM Research

I’m Bob Sutor and I’ve been a technical executive in the IT industry for over 30 years. More than two decades of that have been spent in IBM Research. I’ve also spent time on the software side of the business and looking after open source and standards. I’m a mathematician by training and I have a Ph.D. from Princeton University and an undergraduate degree from Harvard College. I’ve been coding since I was 15 and have used most of the programming languages that have come along. My current favorite is Python 3.

My primary goal throughout my career has been to drive technology that has a positive impact on society. In addition to internal IBM leadership and executive positions and the occasional external activity mostly during my standards days, I don’t think we can change the industry with technology unless we explain it and its value in understandable terms. That’s why I spend so much time talking about tech: what is it, how does it relate to things we already do, how and when will it affect us, and what are the pros and cons.

I don’t like hype but I love passion. The two are easily confused unless you can back up what you say with real results. Sure, talk about your roadmap but don’t make promises you can’t keep.

I’m currently working on a book about quantum computing in addition to my leadership role within the IBM Q quantum computing program.

Areas in which I’ve worked: quantum computing, AI, blockchain, mathematics and mathematical software, Linux, open source, standards management, product management and marketing, computer algebra, web standards.

Here’s the sort of embarrassing blurb you can find on my LinkedIn profile:

Since 2017, he is cross-appointed at the Schools of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Computational Science & Engineering, and Electrical & Computer Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research program spans several areas of computational exploration seismology including economic and low-environmental impact (time-lapse) acquisition with compressive sensing, data processing, and wave-equation-based imaging and inversion. He was among the first to recognize the importance of curvelet transforms, compressive sensing, and large-scale (convex) optimization addressing problems involving simultaneously acquired/blended (time-lapse) data with surface-related multiples. He developed curvelet-based denoising and matched filtering methods that are now widely used by industry. He also made several contributions to full-waveform inversion and (least-squares) reverse-time migration by introducing concepts from stochastic and constrained optimization designed to produce high-fidelity results at lower costs. More recently, he has been involved in developing rank minimization techniques for seismic data acquisition, in the development of a domain-specific language for finite differences called Devito, and in the application of deep convolutional neural nets to seismic data processing and inversion. To drive innovations within industry, he started in 2004 SINBAD, a research consortium responsible for several major breakthroughs resulting in tangible efficiency improvements in industrial data acquisition and full-waveform inversion. At Georgia Tech, he vows to continue these activities by setting up a new research consortium with a focus on machine learning. He serves as deputy editor for Geophysical Prospecting and is a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar.