PPSN '26 Nature Inspired Computation on HPC Workshop Organizing Committee
Mark Coletti, Chair
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA
Mark Coletti is a research scientist with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from George Mason University in 2014. His main research focus is improving understanding of evolutionary algorithms within HPC contexts, particularly in petascale and exascale environments. His technical background includes evolutionary computation, machine learning, agent-based modeling, software engineering, image processing, and geoinformatics.
El-Ghazali Talbi, Co-organizer
Polytech'Lille, University Lille - INRIA
El-Ghazali Talbi is a full Professor at the University of Lille. His research interests include metaheuristics, computational intelligence, parallel and distributed optimisation, learning-based optimisation, and neuromorphic computing. He has authored more than 250 international publications, including journal and conference papers, and has delivered 52 keynotes and tutorials. With a h-index of 67 and over 24,000 citations, he is globally recognised for his contributions to computational intelligence and large-scale optimisation.
Philippe Codognet, Co-organizer
Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics (JFLI) at CNRS / Sorbonne University / University of Tokyo
Philippe Codognet received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Bordeaux-I (France) in 1989. He worked at the central research laboratory of Thomson-CSF (now Thales) in Orsay (France) and then joined INRIA, the French National Research Center in Computer Science, with a sabbatical leave in 1997/8 at Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris. Since 1998, he is professor of Computer Science at University Pierre & Marie Curie in Paris (now Sorbonne University). In 2003, he moved to Japan and worked as attaché for science and technology at the French Embassy in Japan (Tokyo). Then, on leave at CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research), he created and directed a joint Japanese-French Laboratory in Computer Science regrouping CNRS, Sorbonne University, University of Tokyo, Keio University and the National Institute of Informatics (Japan). This laboratory became a CNRS International Research Laboratory (IRL) in January 2012. He then worked as Director of the CNRS Office in Tokyo and as attaché for science and university cooperation at the French Embassy in Singapore. He is back in Japan since September 2019 as director of the JFLI (Japanese-French Laboratory for Informatics), and invited professor at University of Tokyo and N.I.I. His main research topics are in the domain of artificial intelligence and focus on combinatorial optimization and constraint programming, high-level programming languages, logic, parallel computing and computer-based music. His current interest lies in Quantum Computing, in particular in quantum annealing for constrained optimization problems. He has over 140 publications in international conferences and journals, (google scholar) h-index = 29, (google scholar) citations ≥ 3150.
Swetha Varadarajan, Co-organizer
Seattle University, USA
Dr. Swetha Varadarajan is a Term Faculty member in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Colorado State University in 2022. Her research focuses on evolutionary algorithms, machine learning, and high-performance computing. She has over a decade of experience working on scalable optimization algorithms and parallel computing techniques for large-scale scientific problems.
