Innovation Advisory Board

Innovation Advisory Board

The Innovation Advisory Board (IAB) oversees exploitation, economic, and societal impact, and consists of individuals external to VECMA, representing Government, NGOs, Industry, and Academia. Current membership comprises:

Professor Beniamino Di Martino, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

Beniamino Di Martino is Full Professor at the University of Campania (Italy). Previously he was Researcher at University of Vienna (Austria). He is author of 14 international books and more than 300 publications in international journals and conferences. He has been Coordinator of EU funded FP7-ICT Project mOSAIC, and participates to various international research projects with various leadership roles (among them five EC FP7 and H2020 projects). He is Editor / Associate Editor of seven international journals and EB Member of several international journals. He is vice Chair of the IEEE CS Technical Committee on Scalable Computing. He is member of many Technical Committees, including: IEEE WG for the IEEE P3203 Standard on Cloud Interoperability, IEEE Intercloud Testbed Initiative, IEEE Technical Committees on Scalable Computing (TCSC), on Big Data (TCBD), on Data Engineering (TCDE), on Semantic Computing (TCSEM), on Services Computing (TCSVC), on Intelligent Informatics (TCII), on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (TCPAMI), on Software Engineering (TCSE), on Distributed Processing (TCDP), on Parallel Processing (TCPP), on Cloud Computing (TCCC), of Cloud Standards Customer Council, of OMG Cloud Working Group, of Cloud Computing Experts’ Group of the European Commission. He is Chair of Nomination Committee for the IEEE TCSC Award of Excellence in Scalable Computing” and member of Nomination Committee for the IEEE TCSC Award for Medium Career Researchers”.

Dr Javier Garcia-Blas, University Carlos III of Madrid

Javier Garcia Blas has been a teaching assistant of the University Carlos III of Madrid since 2005. He received the MS degree in Computer Science in 2007 at the University Carlos III of Madrid. He also received a PhD with honours in Computer Science from University Carlos III in 2010. He has cooperated in several projects with researchers from various high performance research institutions including HLRS (funded by HPC-Europe program), DKRZ, and Argonne National Laboratory. He is currently involved in various projects on topics including parallel I/O, cloud computing, and accelerators for high-performance platforms. He is currently involved in bioinformatics projects. He has participated in many conference organization committees, and in the last two years he has been Program Chair of EuroMPI 2013, C4Bio 2014, and ESAA 2014. He has 33 research publications in international journals and conferences.

Dr Alberto Marzo, The University of Sheffield

Alberto Marzo is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) of Cardiovascular Biomechanics at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield. Alberto’s research expertise is firmly rooted in Engineering and Mathematics in the context of computational biomechanics, with a PhD on the mechanics of flow through elastic vessels from the University of Sheffield, a David Crighton Research Fellowship at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, and participation in several EU projects, focusing on cardiovascular flow characterisation and development of computational frameworks. Dr Marzo’s expertise has a unique and strong emphasis on clinical interpretation and translation, with his time spent as Clinical Scientist for the UK National Health Service (Devices for Dignity). This experience gave Dr Marzo exposure to the UK healthcare system, where he has witnessed the often difficult clinical perception of innovation, and the resulting challenges relating to technology adoption. This multidisciplinary background provides Dr Marzo with a strong insight into the pathway from knowledge discovery to clinical impact.

Professor Maziar Nekovee, University of Sussex

Maziar Nekovee is a Full Professor and Dean of Sussex-Zhejiang GongShang AI Institute at the University of Sussex, UK. Prior to this role he was Head of Department of Engineering and Product Design at University of Sussex. In addition to over 15 years of leadership and research experience at top Universities in the UK and China, he has over 15 years of experience of leading and conducting industrial research and collaborations in telecommunication and mobile technology sectors, working for and with tier-one industry in Korea, UK, Europe, the United States, China and Japan. He is an elected Vice Chair of NetWorld 2020 European Technology Platform in Communication Networks and Services, where he contributes to beyond-5G and 6G strategic research and innovation agenda of Horizon Europe in Smart Networks and Services (SNS).

Dr Anastasia Rissanou, Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH)

Dr. Anastassia Rissanou has a degree in Physics. She received her PhD from the Physics Department of the University of Crete (2003). After this, she worked as Post-Doc researcher in various places, among them Institute of Physical Chemistry – Molecular Thermodynamics and Modelling of Materials Laboratory, National Center for Scientific Research, “Demokritos”, Athens, Greece and the Chemical Engineering Department of Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. She has experience in research topics related to the study of structural, dynamical and thermodynamical properties of complex systems of polymers, colloids, small biological molecules and hybrid nanostructured materials. She is skilled in various simulation methods (Monte Carlo, Molecular Dynamics, Brownian Dynamics) in atomistic and coarse grained level, as well as multi-scale simulation techniques. On top of that she has worked on many joint simulation and experimental projects, something which supports her ability for collaboration with experimental groups.

Dr Alfonso Santiago, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre

Alfonso Santiago is currently a researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), part of BSC’s spin-off ELEM biotech, and an active member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers subgroup V&V40. He holds a degree in Bioengineering and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering. His main research areas are HPC methods for fluid-structure interaction, multiphysics modelling and computational electrophysiology. All these fields of expertise are condensed on his work a fluid- electro- mechanical model of the human heart for supercomputers”. During his postdoctoral research, he focused on verification and validation methods for biomedical multi-physics models. Today, he is working tightly with the US Food and Drug Administration (US) and multiple biomedical devices companies to deliver credible simulation results that can reduce the time-to-market of novel biomedical devices.

Professor Pär Strand, Chalmers University of Technology

Pär Strand is an Professor in Electromagnetic Field theory. His research field is transport in Fusion Plasmas. He is involved both in analysis of experiments, mainly at JET, and develops analysis software for ITER, JET and other tokamak experiments. The long term aim of the research is to help establish fusion as a viable energy source for the future. In addition to fusion research Pär is alos engaged in development of technologies for large scale simulation tools and data driven research and have been heavily involved in EU projects developing ICT tools for simulations. He is also the Director of Chalmers e-Science Centre.

Professor Marco Viceconti, University of Bologna

Marco Viceconti is full professor of Computational Biomechanics in the department of Industrial Engineering of the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, and Director of the Medical Technology Lab of the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute. He is visiting professor at the University of Sheffield, UK, where he founded and led for seven years the prestigious Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine. Prof Viceconti is an expert of neuromusculoskeletal biomechanics in general, and in particular in the use of subject-specific modelling to support the medical decision. He is one of 25 members of the World Council of Biomechanics. Prof Viceconti is one of the key figures in the in-silico medicine international community: he founded the VPH Institute, an international no-profit organisation that coordinates this research community, and drove the creation of the Avicenna Alliance, which represent the biomedical industry interests in this domain. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering. According to SCOPUS he published 346 papers (H-index = 48).